I’m quite certain that Pokemon has passed its prime with you youngsters (ha! I feel like an old man!), but it still amuses my eight and five year old kids. This is for a fake movie trailer for their amusement.
This pikachu still needs fur, but I’m pretty happy with its overall form. It’s also lacking eyes. The cheek, claws, tail and nose are just vert-painted for now. It’s purposely gaunt - the fur will plump it up. I haven’t done any blending in months, and thought I’d throw this up.
Also, I was going for more of a “real animal” look than something stylized.
I’m 16, back when I was about 10 or 11, I really liked Pokemon. I really don’t anymore, but I still have a place in my heart for it. It really showed me what I really want in life. A couple of friends who will help me and go through tribulation with me, won’t stab my back, and who like just because. And people around me who love me. Sound like a sappy loser. Whatever.
Cool, i did a pikachu way back in the day, useing Blender, so i can appreciate your idea. Only suggestions are that he looks a little too boxy, try rounding out his appendages. Maybe get rid of some of the divets and deformations on the surface, he looks kinda crinkled.
If you want to go for a realistic, maybe model it after the acctual pika that pikachu is based on. Cute little buggers they is!!! Maybe could make use of the cool new partical hair and hair library, wish that was around back
in me own blender days!!!
Well, gaunt usually means skinny, bare, or skeleton like, so i wouldnt call the char gaunt at all as he looks far from anorexic. He looks almost chubby in some areas acctually, best to try to model a very skinny model if you want gaunt.
And never rely on hair, clothes or things that “cover-up” your mesh or to hid poorly modled details. Not saying that its poorly modled, i wouldnt be that rude, but it just looks like its got bumps and divets here and there, and it could be improved upon, especially with classic skinny areas like the rib cage and spine.
Harkyman, could you post a wire of your work, would help with seeing what exactly is going on with the lineflow etc… make it easier to critique.
henrymop: nah. That’s good stuff to learn at any age.
emfrobia: no z-brush. Just Blender modelling.
Bapsis: I’m not thinking that the fur will cover up bad geometry – just that all the mice and rats I’ve ever caught been much scrawnier than their furred appearance would have you believe.
Robin: I know, but the anime pikachu is very stylized… i could have made a 3d toon pika pretty easily, but that wasn’t the goal.
Playing around with the particle controls for a while, I’m thinking that there are not adequate tools available at this point to really brush the fur flat against the hide like you’d see with a short haired dog, etc. Drat. The best thing would be to create a nice uv-mapped fur texture normal map and use particle fur for places like ear tips, backs of legs, etc, but normal map rendering doesn’t work correctly yet.
Hope you didnt take offence, only ment constructive crit to help. The line flow could use some work and rounding off a bit, the legs and arm areas look almost square and blocky. And lines that show the “gaunt’ness” could have a more accurate flow to them, you did say you wanted to go for a “real animal” look. Maybe use those furless russian cats for a good gaunt reference, take not of the way the muscles flow over the skeleton and go for lines that emulate that.
Also if you really wanted to go for a “real animal” look, why not model it closer to an acctual pika, is much more stought and has rounded ears like the reference i posted. Right now because of the longer ears and long body shape and legs he kind of looks like a bunny rabbit.
Yep, Pikachu means ‘lightening mouse’ in japanese. At least according to an old nintendo magazine i remember reading.
It looks a bit more like a rabbit than a mouse, but it still looks good and is recognisable as a stylised Pikachu! Though…if you changed the tail and texturing a bit it could be a Raichu…
I’ve always been a huge fan of your work, which is why it makes it hard for me to behold this…this…thing I see before me.
First off the mesh is gruesome. really gruesome. Take the tail as a case in point; It looks very much to me like you just modeled the outline of the tail and did a simple extrude…that’s what, two minutes work?
More:
Too many verts for a subsurfed mesh
No loops whatsoever. It’ll be a nightmare to edit later.
Vert placement is awful. It looks like every bone in his body has been broken.
It looks more like a ferral rat than pikachu.
I’d scrap the mesh, but not the project…I hope that’s what you meant.
anyway, with regards to character modeling, Mr bomb’s video tutorial is pretty much the best thing going right now, it helped me out a hell of a lot with my own workflow, maybe you can take a gander if you haven’t seen it already:
I find it impossible to take offense when someone says I’m a huge talent.
The project’s still alive, just this mesh will be flushed.
Had a nice walk this afternoon to pick up my car from the mechanic (45F in February in Pittsburgh is really nice), and was thinking about it… I usually don’t post my work at this early stage, and the fact that I did makes me wonder if I didn’t realize on some level that it was crap. Thanks for pointing it out.
I seem to recall a patch floating around that does a bias angle for particles to allow flatter fur but I don’t see it in the tracker, so maybe i misremeber.
Maybe could make use of the cool new partical hair and hair library, wish that was around back
