Hello Again Guys, I havn’t forgotten my Spencer WIP: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=201495 But for the time being, I have a Portfolio competition contest to enter february 1st admist applying to college for scholarships, so I NEED NEW CONTENT in my my current Portfolio (which can be found here: http://williamoglesby.wordpress.com/portfolio/ ) YAY~!!! So, with this in mind, I set out to see my concept artist Buddy Wes Talbott, who was currently working on a character for a final at CCAD. I really fell in love with the style of the character immediately and asked him if I could model it. Having gotten permission, I went full speed ahead and started. Which is why I’m here now. I’m a few hours in, but I’ll catch you up.
He’s about 10 years old. He’s a young boy who lives in a time where evil runs rampant and no man is brave enough to rise and challenge it, and bravely sets out on a quest to test his courage and might.
Ok so that was dramatic, but anyway. on to the technical process. First off I blocked everything out so that I would have general volumes and proportion locked in place.
I immediately moved on to finalizing the boot model, since it was closest to completion.
and this evening the longest part of the process thus far took place, modeling of the gloves. These are not complete yet but the main section of them is done. a lot of the stuff you see in the concept will be textures and normal maps, but I think I’m going to try and get the orange triangle in there with an actual model. I’m actually pretty happy with my topology across this part as well, since I didn’t use an existing model as reference, I just free styled it and created my own method. good experience.
Head modeling begins tomorrow hopefully, but for tonight, I’m going to bed, it’s already 2am .____. I hope you enjoy the WIP and thanks for reading!
Hey guys, smallish update. I’m waiting on head turns from Wes, (which I saw him draw but I don’t have scans yet) but I don’t believe in being idle for too long, so I went ahead and added some wrinkles and seams to finalize the pants. mostly the wrinkles for the pants will be texture detail I think, but It will certainly help to have some physical volume to them as well. sorry for the small update and I hope to bring you something more exciting soon
totally off topic -> I was listening to Adiemus - Karl Jenkins while working cus it came on pandora radio… is it just me or does it sound like almost a direct rip from something out of the avatar OST?
Edit: edgeflow done. It may not look like much yet, but this is always a crucial step in my process for predefining volume and proportion, and having a clean mesh that’s well articulated for animation later. I’ll approve this with Wes and then push forward on filling in the faces
HEY~! Big/small update(??? XD) Mostly big to me, because I finished the ears, which are ussually the most challenging part of a head model for me. Cartoon ears can actually be more challenging then realistic for me because there is little to no refrence, once again though, like with the glove, I just powered through it creating my own method as I went and the head finished as ALL QUADS and only one six point pole in a spot that doesn’t move and is largely hidden by hair (bonus points to whoever spots it ;D) so I guess that’s ok. About the head leaning so far forward over the body, that I’m going to correct on my third pass of modeling, where I tweak everything, and I’ll approve all of this with Wes once again. The hair is very temporary, just to construct a more accurate volume, and will either be modeled more accurately later on or I’ll commit artistic suicide and try to do it for real with the hair sim. (I know which you guys will be voting for D : )
Anyway, not bad progress over lunch break. Can’t wait to get out of highschool >: (( but at the end of this week winter break starts, and I’ll have lots of free time to finish this out and figure out how to rig this. Thanks for all the support so far, all the comments are very motivational to keep this thing going : ) I was really surprised to hear good feedback from some of my favorite artists in the community here, So thanks to all of you. Back to doing trig till this evening. .___.
This may seem like a small update, because it seems as though nothing has changed, but in fact a lot has, it’s mostly underlying structure though. previously, the arms were just tubes coming out of the shirt. Now however, the underlying structure is modeled through underneath his shirt, for the sake of articulation and ease of rigging later on. Additionally, when I come in tomorrow and model the shirt, I will have underlying structure to contour to : D
So I’m pretty pleased with progress actually, I’ve gotten about 90% of the way through second pass modeling in 2 and a half days :U Just gotta redo the shirt tommorow, add some wrinkles, sharpen up some stuff, add some seams in other places… and then It’ll be onto final tweaks and materials/texturing! : D
WOAHHH almost forgot. I did some deformation tests on the arm too, which I try to do on all the joints while modeling a character, so as the rigger doesn’t angrily throw stuff at me when I send him the model for the first time. check it out:
~SECOND PASS COMPLETE~ GREAT VICTORY! XD So in only Three and a half days we’re done with second pass. Even though the hair will change, the total vert count is~: 62,641. It’s quite economical, I think, since it includes the prop as well. Third pass will be a quick Peer Review session With Wes Talbott and a few others, then we’ll move onto materials, textures and HAIR SIMULATION! (scary)
Quick update, just a turntable with AO/Wires. It shows precisely why I did it though, there’s a few normal errors I need to fix, and whenever you do a turntable render like this those come out quite clearly so you can fix them in your third tweaking modeling pass and so your not having to edit things last minute while your rendering your movie. It’s also available in 720P if you go to youtube directly. Thanks, Square!
Alright so quick update. Wes is finishing off his last final and I’m on my second to last day of school before winter break, so theres been a bit of lull, but I’m back in action again, painting Wallace’s head neck and arms texture.
In other news, particle hair has been abandoned for the sake of efficient use of time especially considering it will eventually be rendered in an animation. Instead I plan to use this technique, which I heard about through a friend of a friend who’s the texture artist under a project (this: http://hfilm.wordpress.com/ ) directed by the roommate of colin levy (director of Sintel). If that isn’t a loophole connection to blender VIP’s I don’t know what is. But hey, if this project and Colin Levy’s stuff are being worked on in the same dorm room, that must be an exciting place to be right now XD Anyway. Back to work for me.
I must ask. How exactly did you do the hair. I’m making a character with what I plan to be a similiar hair style (actually closer to appleseed but oh well). Thanks
Good question, someone else asked me on facebook as well, although, as I’ve said before, this is temporary, the best way to do it ultimately is to model it, but if you want a fast result then this is what you do. Quote facebook:
Friend 14 December at 13:06
how did u make the (hair) in that picture u just submitted
Me 14 December at 14:56
oh, that’s easy. it’s just a bunch of paths, which you get by doing Shift A>Add>Curve>Path and then I change the settings by turning off front and back and leaving on 3D in the editing panel (hit f9 to get there((at least in version 2.49b this works))) add some bevel depth as well, .2 is a good basis ussually and then I hit Tab to go into edit mode of the curve, from there pull it around into whatever shape you want by right clicking points and pushing g to grab them and pull them around. then you can also use Alt + S on those points to scale them to various sizes to create more of a conic shape instead of a tube. that should result in something like this:
also, you can increase or decrease bevel resolution if you want it to be more square or more round. just mess around with the settings and see what works for you, but most importantly, have fun. Curves are useful for a lot of things, but most people don’t know how to use them.
Friend 14 December at 15:57 Report
thx dude
i can use this to make my anime hair and then spikes.
can this be converted to mesh
Me 14 December at 16:01
yeah just hit alt + c over the 3D viewport and it will prompt you if you want to make conversion to a mesh
End Facebook quote. I hope this helps.
Since I’m posting, another brief update, Wes may paint the textures himself, depending on how many commisions he has during winter break
So I have to apologize a bit first. Wes and I, having just gotten off from college/highschool friday, Procrastinated quite a bit this weekend. However, now that we’ve enjoyed some time off, we’re back to work. Progress has been a bit slow because Wes has many commissions to do over the winter break. But, I am proud to present Wallace with New Face and Eye texture. this has really upped the overall quality of the piece, and I’m looking forward to seeing textures on the rest. Also, I’ll begin modelling the hair soon. A quick question to you all… some of the images here have become quite lossy from there original jpeg compression after being loaded almost 600 times? Is there another place to upload that has less issues then tinypic? Cus I’d like the last viewer to enjoy the quality as much as the first if possible… until then, here’s the update.
Your character rocks !
