Finished Modeling!

This is the finished product of my 3D modeling. There were a lot of things that were challenging to me - like the thumb loop and the apperance of many triangles, but I'm glad that there were things that was quite easy to do like my hair strand and the feet were actually pretty simple.

The head was quite troublesome - when I first tired to model the hair it was pretty difficult - however after playing with the vertices's on the sides and triangle busting I finally got it right. Also yesterday there was a gap between the head and the hair - I fixed that by extending that bottom parts of the hair so that they were stuck inside the scalp. The middle of the mouth was looking a bit weird too and the teachers told me that there was faces located inside the mouth and once I got rid of them it started to look pretty good.

The tail that I wanted to originally add had a lot of "fluff" to it that I could have made by extruding the faces of the tail, or stacked circular objects on to of each other to create the fur of the bunny tail. I decided to instead just have a simple circle that would serve as the tail because like one of the teachers said, the tail is not the selling point and therefore should keep it relatively simple.

Side Views.

One thing that I didn't add from my turnaround is the piece of hair that is sticking out on the left side of my character - I could have done an extrusion from the hair but I think that this looks fine as it is, and it is an extra detail that seems pretty unneccesary. 

A lot of the peer critques that I got were just full of, it's cute! So I didn't have that much to edit. One thang that came up a lot was that the feet were quite square/sharp. I removed some edge loops from the tip so that it could be a little more rounded.

Overall I am pretty happy with what I came out with and I hope that I can properly animate it in the future as well!

Hair/Hands

Today I started to really flesh out the hair - adding the under edges to make it less of a 2D plane and also shaping the head so it was more smooth. Some things that I had a little trouble with was making the fringe look nice in 3D, as my turnarounds were not that accurate in terms of the shape.

There were still some sharp edges in here but when I smooth them out it seems to not be as much of a problem. When I mirror the two sides I'll need to shift the left fringe a little as his hair is asymmetrical. I'll need to fit in his ears soon - I dont know if I should extrude from his head or create them from a seperate object. Either way I should get it done soon.

Today I also created the hands for my character. At first this was pretty challenging but as I went on it became a lot easier to see what would work and what wouldn't work. The thumb was an extrusion from the hand, it surprisingly went alright and didn't look out of place as I thought it would. The teacher helped me make an edge loop around the base of the thumb however this created some problems in the form of triangles and 5sided shapes. Thankfully I had the help of some classmates to weed them out - if not I wouldn't have been able to get rid of them as fast as I did.

Update: Head/Hair

I have modeled the head and it was actually quite a challenge. Honestly I had way too many Edge Loops so I deleted some, which made it more blocky but the teachers said it was fine. One of the most troubling things about this was the neck, it was pretty hard to make it come down to a point nicely and I struggled with that a lot. However the problems were mostly caused by too many edge loops and vertexes so once I deleted them it became much easier to manage.

For the joints I had added some edge loops around the crotch to make his legs be able to actually move. I also added extra edge loops around the bottom of the jacket and trousers so when it is smoothed out they edges are more visible.

This is the starting of my bow. For now it is just a square extruded from a circle/cube.

For my hair the teachers helped me by making a flat plane and continuously extuding until I get all around the head. For the eyes I had used a sphere but I plan on getting rid of the triangles later. Also am going to make the eyebrows out of cubes and the mouth will be a seperate object sitting on top of the head that I will manipulate into expressions.

Modelling Details

I have started to flesh out the details of my sleeve, body and leg. The teacher mentioned that it was a little too blocky so I went ahead and made it a little more curved around the sharp edges, also I got rid of some unnecessary lines that the teacher said were a little too close together, so when I smoothed it out there were still some harsh lines. With the teachers advice I made the sleeves a lot more rounded out instead of just four sides like there were initially.

I think one of the hardest things so far is when I delete and connect the faces together and the verticies are not lined up properly - this happened to me often especially around the crotch area.

I still need to do the hand and foot of my character, as well as the head and bow. I don't think that I need to model out the front of his jacket, instead I'll just make it a painted on texture.

Character Modeling

I started modeling my character from here. I decided to make the body first as that seemed like one of the harder thing to do. I modeled the basic leg and shoulder to allow my character to have a basic shape that I could refine later on. I actually had a lot of trouble with the crotch area and the shape of the leg. Also the collar part of my model seems to be glitched with all the extrutions that I put on it.

Overall things seem to be coming together pretty well and I have not had to make any major changes in regards to my 2D into 3D transitions.

Prop

This is the prop that my character Iaven will be holding. It is a carrot, and the leaf will serve as a hair accessory as well when I finish modeling my character. Making this was pretty easy with the help of the teacher giving me new tools to work with, such as the Insert Edge Loop to make it much more rounded.

I actually had a lot of triangles at the top and bottom of the carrot, so I went in and just removed the edges so that each 'triangle' had four edges instead of 3.

Iaven Model Sheet

This is the Model Sheet for Iaven. I didn't think I needed a turn around for my prop but it turns out that I needed a side view so I could determine the thickness of the leaf. I ended up choosing the blonde/blue colour scheme as that was the most popular one in the opinions of classmates and friends, also it is a colour scheme that I enjoy as well.

Peer Critique Session

Today we had another peer critique session. It was different from the others because instead of moving to another room we stayed at our computers and looked at each others characters from the google drive folder.

I put up my colour schemes up for my classmates to review and they voted on their favourite ones - these were the results

1: 6 votes
9: 4 votes
4: 3 votes

2: 2 votes
5: 2 votes

3: 1 vote
6: 1 vote

Personally I enjoy the colour scheme of 4 and 5 myself, so I think I will experiment with combining the most popular colour schemes into something that I like, not to say that I don't enjoy the look of some of these colour schemes but maybe I could try mixing them up a little.

These are some pose concepts that I also put in my peer critique session, they mentioned how it was cute and expressive he is. However somebody mentioned that some poses (top right two) might not match up with his lazy personality. I agree and I will try to tone down some of his expressions when he is not being aggressive to really show his personality clearer.

Somebody also mentioned making his bowtie droop or perk up depending on his emotions and I agree that would be very interesting to see! When I 3D model him it might be hard to make his bowtie have a very floppy skeleton but I think I might try it.

Overall very solid feedback from my classmates that I will be taking into consideration! I find this exercise very helpful towards developing my character.

Iaven Story

Iaven Personality:
His parents are florists that grow their own flowers, however he has a lazy personality and doesn’t want to work in the gardens. His outfit is very proper and aspires to take over his parents shop when he grows older.

Iaven is very protective of his sister and will become extremely aggressive to anyone who is unfriendly to her. If nothing else is happening he prefers to nap at the shop counter while his parents are working the shop.

The Story:
Iaven (heather lavender)
A young boy who fully intends to live the calm life that is promised to him. He’s going to be a florist, like his parents and his grandparents and great-grandparents. It’s an unbroken tradition.

The calm is broken after a family fight. He has to go chasing his confrontational sister down, and when they come back home, they find that their town is frozen in time on the cusp of spring. The people are frozen in time, there is no wind, and they find that they can’t leave.

Amongst the frozen town, they find a sobbing alien. Despite wanting to walk away, his sister urges them to interact with the alien. Through rough gestures, they’re on the same page: restore the alien’s ship and make time move again.

Together, they hunt through the town to look for the broken ship parts, becoming close friends in the process. The siblings decide to call the alien Callia, for innocence. (Flowerspeak is important to them since they’re florists-in-training.) . In the process, they stumble across another alien, who happened to be on the planet by chance. Callia insists the newcomer is their friend, and they search for parts together. The siblings name them Aivi.

They find all the parts, and the ship is fully restored to a flight-ready status. Callia goes to make time move again and pushes the button. Nothing happens. Iaven thinks about his family, and is horrified. He shouts at Callia, out of frustration and tiredness, and leaves with his sister.

He stews in feelings of betrayal and general awfulness, because he thought Callia was a friend. It doesn’t help that he can hear sobbing from a distance away, much like the time they found Callia.

After a long time, he realizes that the sobbing had stopped. He thinks Callia must’ve left, and feels even worse. But he hears the sound of grass crunching under footsteps behind him, and he turns around just in time to see Callia falling over. His sister convinces him to give Callia a chance, and Callia holds up a little part. The missing ship part. He feels faith being restored, and tries to ignore the implications as all the kids scramble back to the ship. With shaking hands, Callia puts the part in and presses a button.

Time around them moves in hyper speed, as it catches up in lost time, and the siblings watch with Callia as time is restored and the flowers bloom around them. The ship fades with Callia as the time approaches the present. When time is normal again, he looks back, but all signs of Callia and the ship are gone. In its place is a plain of flowers, and their parents running towards them to pull them into a hug.

- Written by Hyemi Park

Previous Concepts

Flower People:

I drew up these concepts for some flower people, along also adding some design notes with it. These characters are directly based off the flowers from the film and I didn't really want a character like that. There are also some issues of the character itself from being too complex to transform into a 3D character. Although I do like some elements of the designs so I may use them again in a future design. 

One of the things that I do like is the clothing of the flower people - it looks very Alice in Wonderland esq and I really enjoy that style. 

Mad Hatter:

I took some images that I drew previously and redrew them on a new page so I could explain my thinking process better as the old ones I had were too spaced out or had no readable meaning that I could think of (the images looked very random).

Some things that I would like to address is that even though my inspirations come from the mad hatter, my character is not wearing a hat. This is due to the fact that I do not think that my character needs one and I want the main focal point to be at first the smile, but when I got rid of that I made his bow the center piece. I moved away from the eye style of the film because it looked a bit creepy, which was alright when that was my focus with the Cheshire cat smile however once I moved on to a more innocent personality I had to change it. There was no real inspiration for this eye style I just tried the scribble one first, then moved onto the blocked in oval.

I took the part rabbit theme from the theme of Alice in Wonderland being centered around the small fluffy creatures. I was quite excited to add this theme to my character as it gave it a fresh theme that is fairly simple to follow.

Iaven:

This brings me to one of my final concept sheets. I named him Iaven with the help of my friends. His name is a combination of Lavender and Heather, replacing the "L" with an "I". The name comes from the story that we thought up of for him - he is an aspiring florist with a lazyish personality as he does not want to work in the gardens. He is protective of his sister and will become extremely aggressive to anyone that is unfriendly to her. If nothing else is happening he will prefer to nap at the counter of his parents shop while they are working.

I decided that his prop will be a large carrot that he insists will be important one day. It is the same carrot that he will gift to his alien friend as they are leaving the planet.

Lego Man 3D

Today during 3D we worked in Maya to create a lego man. To create him I used a lot of cubes and cylinders. During times where I was stuck I asked around for the teachers help which was very helpful. To do rotate the hand was also quite difficult but I asked a classmate for help.

Iaven Extended Concept

Last week we had a peer critique session where we sat down and judged each others characters designs. Today we got them back and I have to say.. not very helpful in terms of changing my character design. However I have gathered some feedback into some bullet points here:

- Adding a nose might make it easier to translate into 3D.
- Look out for the neck bow being placed too high, as it might restrist head movemnt.
- I should think about how the character is looked at in a 3D enviornment, eg. the basic shapes and shading.
- I should maybe give him some more unique quirks such as a pattern on the bow or "something else to show is personality a bit more"
- Keeping an eye on the relative ages of other characters, maybe add some straight lines to compliment the curves of his body.
- Looking out for the floppiness levels of his bow/ how rigid it is.

Some advice that I might take is making a test model in Maya to test out his shapes. I feel like this character is made up of circles and cylinder shapes so it should be relatively easy to shape.

Colour Schemes

Today I blocked up some colour schemes that I could try with my characters. I asked around for my classmate's favourite colour schemes and a lot of people preferred the lighter colours such as the red haired one and the first one. Personally I like the light pink haired colour scheme or the blue haired one.

Tomorrow we will be having a second peer critique session so I hope that I can come to a solid desicion by then.

Cubism

I was late for this class but still managed to squeeze in this drawing near the end. It is a drawing of my classmate Hyemi in cubism style.

Maya: Castle

Today we started our first few moment's on Maya - we learned controls, shortcuts etc.
We were also was given a task to create a castle, or at least the front of it.

Maya is alright, I have used it before and even went to a camp that was dedicated to learning the software however that was years ago so I am not sure that I still remember.

Character Design 3D

A new term has started with new teachers, classes and new character designs! I didn't do a blog post last week because I was so tired but I'll try to fit all my thoughts and ideas from last week into this post.

The film I chose for studying in history and refrencing in 3D was Alice in Wonderland, the reasoning behind this is because I enjoy the art style that the disney animators gave to this film and also the characters included - I especially like the mad hatter and wanted to design something around that. Before I started on this though I tried drawing Alice in the style of the film and some characters from it namely the white flower that appeared in the film, I tried drawing her with Alice's frame but wasn't feeling the character too much. I also drew the rabbit from the tea table and a random girl for no reason.

 

After doing this I decided that designing a character around Alice might be a little too boring for my personal tastes so I turned my attention to the mad hatter instead. I loved the small body shape that he has and also the theme surrounding the character. I merged some characteristics with the cheshire cat's smile. From there I moved on to a smaller more innocent looking boy. I attempted to draw something a little more out there with the three eyed potato looking man as well but decided that if I was to design somthing that I'm going to be working with for the next few months I'm probably going to design something that I actually like.

Moving onto the next week where I decided to expand on my characters - I basically just took some new ideas and tried to make something out of it, although I don't think many of them stuck as well. Some ideas that I had were:

- Normal looking boy?

- Puppet boy with huge detachable eye.

- Cloaked figure with wings (too similar to a classmates character so yeah)

- Keyhole man but with arms and legs so he is bipedal. (keyhole man was my character from 2D)

- LG clock man with tophat.

- Heart with face and arms/legs.

- Palm tree pokemon?

I took the idea of my mad hatter character and expanded his design to be more cutesy. I also toyed with the different eye styles of scribbles and cute circles, I was also thinking of adding some eye shine but seeing as my movie inspiration doesn't have any I just didn't add any. I was also thinking of giving him a bunny tail and when people asks him where his ears are they are secretly his bow. 

During peer review a classmate suggested giving him a bunny nose and whiskers so I tried that. It looks cute but I don't know about adding that to the final design - I'll need to ask more people for advice but I don't think I'll add them. I also tried concepting different tails but the bunny tail is something that I'll probably stick with. I drew an anime older version of him too but that isn't too relevent aha.

A classmate suggested to draw different angles and facial expressions for him however the class was nearly ending and I didn't have time to do much more. I think that I'll draw an expression sheet for him to further get a better feel for my character but I am happy with the direction that I'm going with his design as it is. Overall, I feel as though my character has moved very far away from the style of Alice in Wonderland, but because his initial concept was inspired from the movie I feel as though I'm moving forward in the design and not being constrained to stay in one place in terms of designing a character. I'm actively working on simplifying my character to make it easier to translate into 3D, compared to my first character design I think I succeeded.