[Finished!] Kiki's Delivery Service - Kiki head study

beis

Hi all!

I was inspired by this video on Arc System Works stuff on Guilty Gear Xrd and how they created a 2d look in 3d( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZsboyfs-L4) and decided I wanted to learn about that, using a character from one of my favorite movies, Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service!


This is my first time trying to make a face, so I'm already seeing things that I need to redo with the face topology. I'll rework that before moving onto other parts. Eventually I want to build a facial rig to try to match the animation from the film. But that's for another week...

I'm building this with the intention of putting it on Sketchfab, so I have to work with the limitations for that, e.g. faking the cel shader look, using the inverted hull method of creating an outline, etc. 

Anyways, here's my WIP of the her head!




Any feedback is always appreciated!

beis

Been working on the facial topology; it's much cleaner now. Facial proportions are starting to look closer to Kiki, and I've been experimenting with shrink wrapping the nose and mouth lines to the face so they're easier to move. It's pretty cool to see them in motion!



I think I'll try to nail down the face some more before moving on to the bow and hair..

beis

Face is looking better, and I've spent much time getting the hair looking like something I like. Still have to fix a bunch, but I'm much happier with it now. Then it will be time for the bow, and then some mouth and eye shapes...

beis

Head model is done for all intents and purposes! I’m sure there will be some tweaking as we rig, but I like what I am seeing   

Now it’s time to rig the face...

beis

It's been a while since I have updated!

Finally finished the eyes for now. Here's some expression tests.


Time to move on to the mouth!

beis

The mouth is coming along, and I have been trying to match different poses to see how close I can get:

It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there. I could keep tweaking this, but I think I am getting close to the end; this has already gone longer than I was planning... 

Ashervisalis

Looking great!

beis

She's finished!!



Unfortunately for various reasons, I couldn’t get the animation onto Sketchfab - but I do have a static pose that you can check out:
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/kiki-face-kikis-delivery-service-b825b651e83a4f0dbe53de4c54ffd74e

NikhilR

This is fascinating, could I see the wireframe of the model?
Great work!

Ashervisalis

What is this rendered in? I'm wondering how you got the cool line work in the shader. Looks really well done!

Pav3d

Animation is really nice!

allmighty_thunder

Wow that is really cool i love seeing 3d that does 3d styling well

beis

@NikhilR - thanks very much! Here's a gif of the same shot with wireframe:

If you want to be able to get a little closer to the wireframe, you can go to the Sketchfab link and turn on wireframe.

Under the hood, it's mostly lots of wire deformers, blend shapes (for the mouth), and a loooot of shrinkwrap deformers to keep everything attached to the face. Much of the controls also toggle, so you can change the mouth or eyes between being open and closed, or change the visibility for the different eyelid lines.

@Ashervisalis - Thank you! This is actually just a playblast in Maya! It's using Arnold shaders, but the way they are set up is a little bit different so they can show up in Sketchfab:

• The line shader is a hack - you extrude the pieces you want to see, separate the newly extruded geo, reverse the normals, assign a shader with the color of the line you want, and turn on "double sided" for each geo. This blog post shows a bit of how this works.
• The cel shading is also interesting; most models on Sketchfab just paint in the two-tone look, which is fine in static but isn't super flexible when you want to reuse a rig. I found this model of Link that does have some dynamic cel shading going on. That artist also has another model that you can download that shows how he achieved that look
  
  The gist of it is you use the emission in your shader for the color when it is in shade, and the base color when it is in light. Turn up metalness so both colors come through. Then make your environment light with an image that has a clear distinction between black and white so there's no falloff. And then you have it!
  
  I still had to mess around with the normals of the face so that they looked nicer than how they do by default, but that's the basic idea. You'll also notice that it isn't perfect - because the metalness is turned up, there's a bit of a white sheen to stuff (you can especially see it on Kiki's hair) - but it does get you pretty far!

@Pav3d - thanks! This was the shot I was trying to match (unfortunately the audio isn't present - there isn't a lot of clips from the movie online, ah well)

beis

Got one last shot for this project before I wrap it up!



Here's a clip showing the shot I was trying to match - sometime I might bring the two clips together and match them up for a comparison.

Doing this shot kind of exposed the limitations of the rig I built; the mouth setup especially started to go a little whack by the end of the shot (you can see the outline of the mouth getting a lot thicker by the end, and the tongue and teeth are never really quite straight). Originally my intention was to try to get this onto Sketchfab. If I were to do this again, I would probably try using animated textures for the mouth shapes and maybe the eye blinks as well. Ah well, we live and learn!

And with that, it's time to move on to something new...