Creating the Feet
I wanted to start off by creating the feet and then working upwards, leaving the head and the hands till later on. I am going to be using box modeling for the main parts of the character as I find it the easiest method as it gives you a starting point which you can then manipulate.
I created a box with 6 x 2, this will give me enough space to make the foot shape. I am not going to be creating toes for my character as he will be wearing slippers and will not be on show to the user. The foot itself will also be over exaggerated to match my style of character (This will also be reflected in his other body parts such as the head and belly.)
As you can see from the image above, I have taken the vertex's and pulled them up and inwards to create the shape. I wanted to keep the polygon count as low as possible, other wise when it came to animating and applying bones or a biped. (Also it is generally good practice to keep the polygons low, making things less complicated when trying to manipulate later down the line and also helps keep the shapes smooth when applying a turbo smooth.)
Creating the Ankles
Things with the modeling were going surprisingly well, which is very strange for me!! So I was expecting to have some major problems coming my way soon... But while my luck was in I carried on, I used the edge tool to create the angle muscles. Holding the shift key and pulling at each edge creating new ones. Once the edges had been created, I then welded the points together, as otherwise it will not be a complete object and have gaps!! (BAD to have gaps!) Then as you may have guessed simply edited the vertex to give it greater definition.
Show me some Pink Slippers!!
Now that I had made the foot and the ankle, I started to think about how I was going to make the slippers. Once again I did not want to make anything too complex so decided to take the foot and copy it over, remove the ankle and parts of the foot itself and was left with a slipper shape. I then used the polygon tool to create the extra polygon for the missing parts. Scaled the slipper up and edited the vertexes till I was good and happy. (I had to scale it up becasue otherwise it would have been the same size as the foot and when smoothed may have seen parts of the foot sticking out.)
Last Parts of the Leg
I carried on moving the polygons upwards, I created a knee by simply pulling out the vertex points to the front and at the back of the model. You will notice they are quite low down, this is mainly due to my character as he is overweight, rather short and his legs need to match that criteria.That was as much as I needed to create for the legs maybe make them slightly taller or making them wider to make him look fatter!! :D But they will be put to the side for the moment and will come back into play when the rest of the character has been made and then will be attached to the rest of the body.
Creating the Rounded Frame
The tutorials that Jo had given us in class basically used a box and then extruded the parts around to make excuse my slang, "A buff Manly Man" type of frame, now however I looked at it my character was far from this and needed to have a big old belly sticking out.
I started off by creating a circle and turning down the amount of edges ( It looks rubbish at this stage but makes it easier to work with and will look fine once smoother over with a modifier.) Also the bottom middle part will be removed to attach the legs, so he wont just look like an orange with 2 small legs running around.
Then as simple as it is, we all know how I have achieved the above image. Converted to editable poly and chopped the top loads of polygons off, nothing new or exciting but needed to be said none the less!
Then grabbing my trusty edge tool and holding that magic shift key, pulled out the top elements of the circle to form what will be the upper body.
Wow I bet you are not sitting there thinking he has taken a picture of every single step and I am going to be here all day. Not quite I have shown mainly the main parts, I have not shown every image of every little tweak and nudge to bore the pants off you. Just to quickly show the main steps into the modeling process, honestly just grit you teeth and bare it (It will all be over soon!)
Big Belly Button
I knew that the cloths I was going to create for my character would be showing his belly button and his sexy love handles. So wanted to give them some more detail now while it was fresh in my mind, not being distracted by harder elements such as the face or animating.
Using something a little bit different from using the polygon, edge or vertex tool. The cut tool allowed me to slice up the polygons to create a diamond shape. I then used the extrude tool and embed the polygon inwards, I repeated this process until I had created what you see above. You will also notice some of the vertex points on the hips are sticking out, as strange as this looks once a smooth has been applied it gave them a flabby look I was searching for.
The Main Body Frame
As you can see from the image above the main part of the body is completed, I have left spaces to connect the head and arms which will be created next and then welded onto the mesh. I find this easier to work on separate parts when modeling and then connecting them as it allows you to pan around everything and see it without having your view obstructed.
The flabby arms to come!!
I created the arm in the same fashion as I created the foot by making a box with a few height and width segments and then using the polygon and extrude tool to give it more depth. (I used the uniform scale to make the muscles bigger, also to create the hole for the hands.) I attached the arm to the body but in order to do so, had to create more polygons at the meeting point and cut along several parts. The mesh looks quite messy but is unnoticeable when smoothed and also cloths will be added over the top.
Your body is looking good give me 5!! ooo wait you cant... sorry about that
The hands!! One of the crucial elements of the body as they have such detailed design and have very calibrated detailed movements its very important to get them looking the best as possible. They have to be made as simple as possible to enable to bones to link and grab each finger correctly and replicate a real hand.
I started thinking about how many fingers to give my character, would I base it on the human hands of 4 fingers and 1 thumb. Or like most cartoons have only 3 fingers and 1 thumb?? I wanted to know why animators actually stopped using this extra finger?
"In the early days of animation, they used to produce up to five shorts per month of five minutes each second of film has 24 frames in it. Which makes around 11,000 drawings per short. The pressure to produce these was huge and one less finger reduced their workload significantly. One other reason is that having a five-fingered hand would add a level of realism which would look ridiculous on many cartoon characters. And realism isn't really a big issue when discussing a talking mouse! " (http://www.lbc.co.uk/why-do-cartoon-fingers-only-have-three-fingers-8164)
From the passage above I found out that it was cheaper and for cartoons having 4 fingers looks strange, I had remembered this from sketches I had done in the past where tying to fit that amount of fingers in was very hard as you run out of space quickly and ended up squeezing everything together.
Using the extrude tool allowed me to make the fingers and the the thumb, you can see by the lines that they have been extruded twice and angled down.
You can see from the image above how the hands look with a turbo smooth applied, the thumb looks lacking in girth. There are no knuckles but the hand is starting to retain the shape I am looking for. But will require some tweaking to get it to a point at which I am happy.
You can see from the image above, I have created the knuckles, given the fingers and thumbs some more depth and generally gone edit crazy. I am happy with the end result of the hand and feel that it will work quite well when starting to skin with with the bones, now just the tricky part of connecting it to the arm.
Actually it was not that much of a pain, the polygons don't line up perfectly, but this is mainly because the hand has allot more that the arms. This was essential to get the bulging knuckles and finer details into the hand. I simply created more polygons and used the weld tool to connect them.
The end result actually was not that bad, there is a few sleigh bumps and pinching in certain areas but with a few tweaks I feel I can remove them or bring them to a minimal that they are not noticed by the user.
Attaching the Parts of the Body
I am not going to bore you with loads of images of me using the welding tool and attaching each piece together. I will tell you however that I used the mirror tool to create another arm and hand for the other side of the body, which seemed easier than making another arm and hand. Attaching simply required cutting out polygons and then welding the parts together, both normal and target welding.
You will notice I have circled some details, I wanted him to have some arm and chest hair. Tried using the hair modifier but it simply messed up the entire model and added a large amount of rending time for such a small amount of hair. It also did not allow turbo smooth to be on while having hair and with the front selected made hair come from the sides and back :S This led me to creating cartoon style hair which I think works allot better.
Quick Reflection
My character is really starting to come to life at this stage, I cant wait to start the animation process. This is mainly because I have never animated a character before only moddeled so its all new and exciting. However my next task is creating the face, a part that will probably be the most demanding but yet rewarding. As most of the expressions will come from the face it is crucial that I get a good and creative design.
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