So I shall call him Albert. This is my first attempt at a full character. I wanted a sort of styalized, almost cartoonish look. Any advice would be awesome.
I have a specific question. When I hit set smooth, sometimes a seam appears. (Like at his shoulder, but more obviously in his hand.)
How can I fix this?
Thanks,
LGM
For one thing, you have a really bad pole there. For the rest, looks like you’ll have to recalculate normals (CTRL-N)
Wow. Recalculating normals took care of it all. Except for the wrist. Forgive my ignorance, but what is a pole?
it looks like the wrist and hand arent connected, try using remove doubles. Do you have any idea of where this will be going? like an animation? or a scene? keep it up 
Forgive my ignorance, but what is a pole?
I’m pretty sure that he means you have one point with many many edges radiating from it.
To sort the hand out, go into edit mode, select all verts with A and press ctrl+n then click recalc normals outside.
Also, the face could do with some tweaking, he looks like a bit of a spakka at the moment.
Take a look at some of your favourite ladies (or mens) faces to see where all the bits and bobs fit.
Well, yeah, that was part of it. I made this guy is seperate pieces, then put them all together. I forgot to delete the faces on the wrist before joining the hand! That and the edges made that wierd line. Thanks.
Yes, this is going to be my base character. I have a definite plan for a short animation. But I plan to build most of my characters off of this guy.
Thanks for all the advice. I’ll post another pic when I’ve fixed his face up a bit.
LGM
Ok, I’ve fixed up the face a bit, and made some expressions for the heck of it.
I’m quite happy with the way they turned out (though the big grin looks a little strange). Those aren’t the actual RVKs, just rough ideas.
Now I know hair is a very difficult thing to do. For the eyebrows I used static particles with a blend texture and vector turned on. However, I have seen a video (it was sent to me by a friend, so I don’t know where it was from) of a yeti-like creature with fur that reacted to his body movements, all made with blender particles. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? And if you do, can you point me to the video’s source?
LGM
could you post some shots of him with wire turned on (F7->draw tab->wire button) ?
the flow of character’s mesh seems to have problems, and I could then point out the most important parts to fix …
(if this is your base character, it would be good to take care of this now, otherwise all your characters derived from it, will suffer from some weird deformations, especially when animating… )
.b
Well, I couldn’t figure out how to get the wire to render (I got it turned on allright, but it didn’t render) so I took some screen shots and cropped 'em. 
head – subsurf on
head – subsurf off
front – subsurf on
front – subsurf off
side – subsurf on
side – subsurf off
(Was that excessive?)
I realized that about making this character “perfect” since he’s my base. That’s why I posted here, so that I could have my mistakes pointed out. And solutions suggested.
Thanks.
LGM
ok, sorry for a little delayed reply… but here goes something.
it’s a bit hard to see on those shots, especially the hand… but it looks like the mesh needs a bit cleaning… you have built the body from parts, and then put them together… this is, I think, the hard way…
his arms. you can see on the shoulder that they are “glued” in. instead of the body “flowing” into the arms, it stops there, on shoulder line, and then starts again as hand. this creates seam on rendered object, and will make it hard to animate.
head looks like it’s not connected…the neck is not extruded from the body, but seems to just go into it.
below waist line, the mesh complexity suddenly drops… you have lot of triangular faces there, and then after that the legs turns into, what looks like only 8 vertice boxes… this sudden change also is seen on rendered picture. (extra bump)
he knees… instead of having knees, you pull the verts in, creating a dent. that’s not right… it might look nice from back of the knee, but not in front, or side.
so… my suggestion, for now, is… try to smooth out those changes in complexity of mesh… remove extra faces that you don’t need… and try to change triangular faces into quads. try to make the mesh flow better… to make it look a one piece, instead of stiched together…
here’s a little image showing some of the places I tried to explain:
Basse, first of all, thanks for your time and advice. I really appreciate it.
Concerning the arms, all the visible black seams were fixed by recalculating normals on the outside. Plus, since then I have smoothed out some of the other places.
About the knee, I resized verts, but then also extruded that box for the kneecap. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to stay. That was sort of “on the fly” and no one’s knees shows through pants like that. That whole area’ll probably be just taken out and smoothed over. (I’m planning to just UV map cloths directly onto him for now.)
Head, I had forgotten to connect the head when I posted those pictures, but it’s connected now.
When I changed the triangular faces on his thighs to quads, his thighs became distinctly “cubical.” With the triangular face, I was able to pull out the front of the thigh a little. Is this a purely asthetic touch, or will it help with animation to change from triangles to quads? Because I think the guy looks good enough for now. (I really just want to animate, so as long as it deforms well to an armature, I’m happy with it as it is right now.)
Here’s an updated picture of him. I have rearranged the vertices on his thighs, shoulders, wrists, and knees.
Thanks again.
LGM
What bothers me the most are his proportions.
At least the width of the head looks about right compared to the width of the shoulders, but alot of things are off.
-lower his armpits a smidge
-the elbows should be closer to the height of the iliac crest (the top blades of your pelvis) - in other words, between the belly button and the hips.
-fore arms are too long, from the looks of it this guy could scratch the back of his shoulder…
-legs in general need to be longer, even if this guy is just average hieght.
-another glaring thing is his back is too straight. It should have more of a backwards S curve (assuming he is standing facing to your left)
Incorporate these suggestions and he will look much more realistic
also, i was impressed by his range of facial movements. good job on that 
Well, I’ve worked on his proportions a little. Basically following your advice except for the S curve on the back. The reason I didn’t do that is because I’m going to be UV-mapping cloths directly onto him, and when wearing clothes the curve in your back isn’t as noticable.
Ah, but in my first post I said I wanted a stylized, cartoonish look.
Thanks! I think I was very lucky with the way the vertices worked out in the face. I only have to move one or two with the o-option (can’t remember it’s real name) on smooth, to change his expression.
Thanks for all your help.
LGM
I agree as far as the proportions, and also he is WAY too boxy. Even if you were to subsurf him, at least try to shape up the wires some. I know you are trying to go with a “cartoonish” look; but even so, he has a couple of places that need some tightening up on. For example, in this pic
the sides of his torso look wierd, like he is wearing a loos glove, or sock or something over it. Do you know what I mean? It is wierd. Check your torso in the mirror, or look at a pic of a torso on a real human, if you were going for abs or if he is supposed to be wearing a shirt, I guess that would work…
