First character model, ever.

Chris O'Mahony

To introduce myself, I'm Chris O'Mahony I attend DAVE school here in Orlando. Been in school for 7weeks now and I finally built the courage to post my week 7 project.

This is my first ever organic as well, the character is "Missing Link" from Monsters vs Aliens. :poly122:

Anywho here is some renders!

woogity

any wire frames by chance?

its looking pretty decent overall man, the fingers are a bit blocky and the teeth need to be addressed again. never saw the film, but the teeth should definatly have some variation to their structure. i like the way your feet turned out they are pretty nice, tho they could be bigger from the ref pick im basing this off of. also the unibrow is hilarious. keep working on him if you have time, good start not bad for your first char.


-Woog

Richard Kain

Not bad for such an early effort. I would work on the limbs, and the way they are structured. I'm getting a very "boxy" feel from them, especially the arms and fingers. Organic models don't look like they are subdivided from box primitives. Take it into a sculpting program to round off some of those edges.

Chris O'Mahony

Thanks for the awesome feedback! I am going to correct the teeth and will try to fix the "boxy" feel he is giving off.

Here is a wireframe shot.

pangarang

I echo everyone else's comments on your first attempt. My first attempt crashed computers. Two major things need to be addressed here.

First, understanding of anatomy and general proportions. Those thighs are too thin to hold up a body of that bulk, stylized or not. Organic tissue is generally connected (with the exception of eyes, teeth, hair and nails) and blend into each other. The character's tail fin does not blend seamlessly into its tail. Reference fish tails to see what i'm getting at.

Secondly, poly distribution. The tail fin has a lot more polys than the face - AND the body. Such a small area of the body with so many polys. Why?? Since the face is likely the part of the body we'll see the most, why not spend your money there instead of the tail which should take the backseat to the face? All that detail you have in the tail can be normal mapped. But you cannot normal map the details of the face as it animates ... well ... you can but it'd take more work than just adding the polys, lol.

wisebrownmonkey

mad props on posting your first work. That alone took courage. If that is your first work, man your going places. That is way better then my first work.

Ged

nice work on "missing link" great effort for a first character I must say

Chris O'Mahony

Thank you all for the kind comments.


Sorry to say but my version of "Missing Link" will remain untouched, at least for a while.

My current project is using build out method to make a self portrait of myself.

And this next week is Zbrush and learning normal maps. :poly121:

Old Arn

Nice to see a fellow DAVE student on here. Make sure you register on the school forum to show off your WIPS as well as to build your network with grads and current students.

As far as your model, I haven't seen "Monsters vs. Aliens" yet (I know, shame on me), but it's looking pretty good for a first model. On top of what others have already said, I think you need quite a bit more geometry on the body. Also, watch out for the "stars" on wide open areas, like what you have on the top of his pecs. Try to tuck them into an inconspicuous spot, or at least somewhere with much more neighboring geometry.

If this project was anything like when I was going through DAVE, it was also meant to be kind of an exercise as part of a department. Part of the grading criteria was that the model had to follow the character designs, so if you tweaked the design to reflect what you thought was more appropriate, then that's points off. I'd imagine that a modeler at Pixar would've been fired if he kept insisting on deviating from Mr. Incredible's supplied character design, spindly legs or not. I have to agree on the blockiness, especially after a quick Google image search.