Building a character

cj-9er

Im a second year game student at Warwickshire college and i have recently in devoured into creating a character from concept to final finished piece, i have used a mix of traditional art with digital art. The digital art done is my first attempt at; the digital art in hindsight isn't the best and i have decided to invest more time in learning better techniques to refine my own skills.

The brief set was to select an era and base a character replicating the the culture of that era, i decided it would be best to have my character as a warrior as i could give a dynamic well structured final piece.

The starting place was my brain storm and from there on my pre concepts to a final concept piece i am currently working on the 3d side and will be uploading my 3d work piece by piece as this thread goes on.



When i first started this brief i wanted to base my character of the native american culture but i later decided that i would change my character to a gladiator. As the gladiator would allow me to show a better knowledge of my anatomy skill set, i would also be able to show a diversity in textures and clothing types.

I started off with some silhouettes which wasn't my usual style but i thought it would be best to try different methods of conceptual drawing.



I then started to add tone to produce texture i didn't enjoy this method and decided soon after to change my character design completely.



I decided to start from scratch and just draw and see what i felt comfortable with.



This lead me on to a more comfortable path of drawing rough sketches which helped me flesh out the concept of a gladiator.







I decided it would be best to try get over my fear of digital and approach concept art using a cintiq a device which i will be spending more time with as it forms a more natural movement when drawing.



What i've learnt is that my skill with digital isn't great and i need to learn more on color theory and texture development.



The final two parts to the concept side of this brief were to develop a character turn around and final concept to base the modelling process off. I am not happy with how my final pieces looks and i will work further improving on this area as i believe both pieces are not to my best standard. I produced the turn around as digital and the final concept as traditional.

jeremiah_bigley

Nice! I really love the thorough process that you have going. Keep up the great work and keep the are flowing!

cj-9er

I started by building a basic body shape out of a cylinder.

The body was then constructed into a more workable shape with the base of the neck added.

The arms were constructed out of a seperate cyclinder and then further defined to the muscle shape of the limb.

The leg segments were also made before the attaching of any limbs to the torso or lower body.

The top row segment on the shoulders is the extruded and the top section of the arm is deleted ready to be attached to the torso.

The arms are then attached to the torso and shaped for correct anatomy.

The legs are then attached and then the symmetry modifier is applied to form both half's of the body.

The body is then modified to have a more natural shape in hindsight i had lost all my work and i feel as though this was rushed job and could have been developed at higher standard, but due to deadlines id rather push myself to completion then ease in to failure.

The hand were then modeled and then attached to the end wrist segments of the arms.


The feet were the next things to be modeled in this image i am beginning to size the feet up.

I applied a turbo smooth modfier to give an idea of what the body might look like in mudbox.

Once the body was built i began to adjust aspect such as the back and the front to produce a better refined shape ready for mudbox.




The next step was modelling a face ready to be attached to my body i used splines and face topology to create the template for the face.

I extruded a separate face from this template ready to be shaped.

cj-9er

[ Segments of structure were then pulled out from the face to form a 3d shape.

A back segment was extrude ready to form the back of the head.

img]http://i.imgur.com/cVQDQZj.jpg[/img] A back segment was extrude ready to form the back of the head.

The back of the head is then formed ready to have a neck modeled from it.

The neck was then modeled

The face is then refined further

The base of the neck was then modeled ready to be attached to the torso

The gladiator Armor was then modeled this was done by extruding parts of the body and separating them as individual items.This made it easier to work on individual pieces of the mesh in mud box.

The body was put back together ready to be unwrapped

The unwrapping process was done with seems and pelt unwrapping



In mudbox i began to sculpt the bodies fine details such muscle structure.

The process of mudbox is working on layers this way you can refine detail without losing old detail on a newer layer i began to sculpt a more refined body shape.

On this later i applied the smaller details such as the nipples and final definition to the body shape.



The final model textured with the armor applied assessing my own work i feel as though this model could have been done a lot better making up for lost time, lowered the amount of experimentation i could do. Knowing this now i feel as though i should put further efforts into my face modelling , applying color and and sculpting in layers in mudbox would improve my work dramatically. The first time use of this i have learned alot but i am only at the beginning of what could be achieved with a little more time.

cj-9er

The final part to my assignment was to creat a low poly model of my model at 25,000 polys with everything in mind knowing how the process works from start to finish i feel as though i could develop a better outcome now.







Here are the final maps i made for my model a diffuse map, normal map and a ambient occlusion map for some reason there were mistakes during the unwrapping this can be seen on the placement of the eyes they have been overlapped on the foot luckily the areas affected are on the bottom half of the foot which can not been seen and on the back of the eyes luckily this area is located within inside the skull.

TomGT

I think you should spend more time arranging the UV layout. There is a lot of empty spaces that are yet to be utilized. Each space counts.

As for the model, did you use references when you modelled? I recommend collecting real life references from movies/photographs that can help a lot with anatomy and the overall figure.

Good to see a clear process documented. Hope the character pipeline has taught you heaps for your next one!

Brian "Panda" Choi

cj, just to get a feel for your thought process, what specifically do you think you need to fix on this model that you would do better next time if you had another go at this?

I want to see what you know about what you don't know so we can take it from there.

thomasan09

Definitely look for reference it does so much help then you can let your imagination do the rest.

cj-9er

well i start off for one the face topology it could have been alot better, the next seems to be too thin. A key part which i had focused on more was the mudbox work as i lost my work due to my pen drive corrupting i lost out on about a week of practice, i feel the models anatomy is slightly in correct. The face also lacks shape the lips and eyes especially i i didn't really enjoy this as i don't want to be a character modeler i aiming to be an environmental artist im am currently work on a big scene. Saying this i would like to be able to character model better i would like to say i can model characters without it being my job role if that makes sense.