Character Project

AlexanderK

Hello dear viewer!
So I saw the Riot Games Art Contest and I got inspired to do my own character. And this character has nothing to do with League of Legends or the contest, I just felt like modelling my own thing.
I'm 17 years old and I'm pretty new to working with these things, please keep that in mind while viewing!

I started to work on this character on 17/10 but I haven't had the time to make this thread until now. But I've documented all of my work since then and I'll post it as soon as possible!
And also, this is a school project and there's a time limit for it.

skodone

gogo were eager to see!

AlexanderK

On this day I started with the concept art for the character. My first idea for a character was of a lone wolf who wanders the world and he was a somewhat of a badass cowboy but then I wanted to do something more futuristic. But I still liked my first idea so instead of throwing it out, I combined it with my new one.
And this is what i came up with.


I decided to give him a head covering mask with a hose gas mask. And I made the eyes glow red to give it a more futuristic look.


As for the clothes I wanted to keep the coat and add a hood. The arms and legs are wrapped in bandages and he has (will have) black leather boots.


And this is my vision for the character

Brian "Panda" Choi

What's the gas mask hose connected to? His jacket?

AlexanderK

I'm thinking that it'll go through the jacket(or it will just go around the neck part on his right side) and he'll have the filters on his back. Now that you mentioned it, it probably looks better if I have it go around instead!

Brian "Panda" Choi

This might be an opportunity for you to practice really solid concept/design workflow.

I really encourage you to not stick to this drawing and do several more (around 40) black silhouette thumbnails of the same charater with different designs. Through iteration, hopefully we might be able to come to something that looks solid.

Mark Molnar explains the process here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEl__CfOT7U

AlexanderK

Thank you for your advice and the youtube video, I'll keep it in mind for the next project. Maybe I'll mess around with the design a little bit more but I've already come pretty far and I'm not sure that I have the time to change things too much at this stage.

Brian "Panda" Choi

You're not that far in. This is not far.

Don't drop something you can take care of now.

AlexanderK

Ahh but you see, what I've posted so far is work from 17/10 and since then I've gone from 2D concept to the actual 3D model. I just haven't had the time to post everything yet, but I will. And also, this project has a time limit and as much as I would like to change things I won't have any time actually do it. I'd rather have this design and have a 3D model at the end of the project than start from scratch and risk exceeding the time limit.

Brian "Panda" Choi

It this a school project? If it's just a personal project without some real deadline, I'd think it might be in your best interest to take the time to really refine what you're crafting. More time is usually awesome!

AlexanderK

Yes it's a school project, should probably mention this in the first post. Yeah I'll definitely give more time for concept in the future.

AlexanderK

On the 24/10 I started working on the 3D model of my character. The first thing i did was to set up my referance images and then i began working on the head.


I used the Create Polygon tool to create the shape of the eye area, and then I extruded it outwards to get more shapes to work with. And then I just moved different vertex points to make it look better. Used the multi-cut tool to put in more edges and get better shapes(I made some very strange edges that I am aware of and they are fixed). I only made the right side of the face and then I used the duplicate special to make the other half. I also added spheres for the eyeballs. I think I'll make the hose from the mask when I've done the rest of the mask and the body.

I'll update this thread more frequently from now on.
Cheers!

TophT

I think if you wanted to get it to look more like a man wearing a mask you should probably have modeled a human head first. Then put the mask on him. That way it will actually look like the mask has something inside it. I would also watch your topology/edge flow. What you currently have is not going to help the shape of your head nor the anatomy of the character.

AlexanderK

Yeah that's a good idea, I actually did that for the body but I agree that the mask would probably look better if I had done that. I didn't put any thought about having the right typology since the mask won't be animated.

AlexanderK

So before I'm completely done with the head I'm starting with the body, There's still alot to do and I think I can make it look much better but I decided to work on the body for a bit. I thought i'd do the body first and then make the clothes ontop of it to hopefully make it look better then if i just modeled it without having a body to follow.

So i started with the torso and I made it out of a 12 subdivided cylinder and erased half of it, added some more edgeloops and shaped it to make it look like the referance images. I opened up a hole for the arms. I used the same method to make the arms. Cylinder - added edges using the multi-cut tool and shaped it after the referance images. I haven't combined the arm with the body in this picture yet, I just put it in place to see how it would look. That's how far I got this day.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Are you planning to box model this from scratch?

AlexanderK

So this day I really started to get somewhere.

I started off by working more on the mask by moving around the vertex points thus giving a more accurate shape to the mask. For example, I pushed the whole bottom-front part forward because I thought it looked pretty silly. I also corrected some of the flaws in the mesh and used harden edge to distinguish everything better.

I combined the arm with the torso by first using combine and then I used the merge-vertex tool to put the together. I also removed some unnecessary edgeloops from the arm and improved the overall shape of the torso.

I also made a quick leg. Here we have the whole model as of 31/10.
Thank you for viewing!

AlexanderK

JadeEyePanda wrote: »

Are you planning to box model this from scratch?

Yep! That's what I'm thinking :P

Brian "Panda" Choi

I recommend you find an orthographic image of a male human, set up reference planes, and conform your silhouette to that reference. Right now, proportions aren't reading realistic.

Do you have ZBrush or an equivalent?

AlexanderK

Ahh I'll definately do that! Thanks for pointing it out. I have Mudbox but I haven't really worked with it that much.

AlexanderK

So since I made the basic shape/size of the body last time, I wanted to make the hands today. So first I tried to model a using my hand as a referance but it just ended up looking like a lego hand. My friend sent my a link to this tutorial which I followed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1mExXURsWk

I downloaded his reference images and started to model the hand out of a cube. I used the same workprocess, adding more edges and extruding to get more detail.

I only modeled the pointerfinger and then copied it to the other fingers. I combined them and used the merge vertex tool to put them together.
When I was done with the hand I merged the hand with the rest of the arm. There were some tri:s but this character won't be animated so I didn't bother to fix them.

The last thing I did today was to start with putting the neck and the head together. I started with extruding the neck closer to the head and then improved the overall shape of the neck.

Cheers!