3D Print

These are the images of my 3D print. she came out a lot better than I had expected. She was a lot bigger than was I expecting. She needed sanding but she was still very delicate so I have decided to leave her as she is so that I don't break her.

Heres a side view of the model. I had to hold her because her base wasn't entirely flat and he head was very heavy so she didn't stand up on her own. You can see the comparison in size of the bust and my fingers.

I am very pleased with how she turned out, I would like to paint her but sanding her down would be a pain and I really don't want to break her, I may try once I'm a little braver.

And the modelling begins...

I set up some planes of my character, the side view and front view to help me in getting the right positioning for my character. I started the main torso first, I decided early on I would model separate bits and stitch them together to help me model better and faster.

I made the body out of a cube and extruded it along and down to make the arm, torso and legs. The head I considered making out of  a cube but it proved far too difficult so I made it out of a plane. This is my first time modelling a human character so I looked up a few tutorials online to help me and I found a very good one on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xls25e08sSg

The head began to take shape nicely. I added hair, which was another separate plane, I kept most bits separate for now so that if it needed changing it was easy to do so and I didn't have to worry about moving parts I didn't want too.

Once she took shape, I worked a lot in smooth mode so that I could see what she would look like finished, going back and forth between smoothed and unsmoothed so I could change vertices if needed.

This was when she was very close to completion. I had stitched her head, hands and feet to the main body, the tail, skirt and eyes I left separate.  Once I had mirrored the geometry I would combine all the meshes to make one model. I tweaked her now and then until I was happy.

And this is the finished, untextured model. I'm really happy with how she turned out. This is the first time I've ever made a character in Maya, and I'm rather proud, I can see some imperfections here and there, but for my very first try I'm happy with the out come. I had to change her design a little. I was getting very close to the poly count limit and I was worried that I would go over so I decided against giving her a hood, for fear of going over the limit and to leave some polys free if I needed to alter her in anyway.

About half way through modelling I changed her hand. the hand on the left was my first attempt and in my opinion it was very poor, I really didn't like it, so I decided to try it again.

Originally I did a quick extrude from a cube to make the hand on the left. but it looked really poor and I couldn't alter it much so I went looking for information to properly model a hand.

I found another tutorial by the same person who did the face modelling earlier on in this post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1mExXURsWk

I found that tutorial the most helpful out of the ones I watched. and the hand on the right is the end result and is MUCH better than before, it looks more realistic and has more definition.

For my 3D print I had to decide what I wanted to print, originally I was going to print all of her out but after asking some friends for their opinions we thought it was best to not print her all out, she has very skinny arms and legs and probably wouldn't have survived the printing.

So seeing as she has no accessories it was best to do a bust of her. The image above is the model I made for printing, it took me AGES to stitch her together, her head was made from 3 separate parts so I had to painstakingly stitch her hair and eyes to her head so that there were no holes. That was a long night followed by a lot of wrist cramping :(

New and revised

This is my new revised version of my character. I made her simpler whilst keeping some of her original aspects.

I kept roughly the same type of outfit, with the jumper and skirt, I changed her boots to shoes and got rid of her backpack.

The most dramatic change was her face and hair. I gave her a simple cut, and gave her big eyes like a Lemur. I kept the same Lemur shaped ears and the long limbs.

Also when designing her I tried to use a different style of drawing, I got influence from the Gorillaz style of graffiti art.

And here is the coloured version.

Obviously her tail is stripy and her hair resembles a lemurs coat somewhat.

I gave her dark bags under her eyes and also gave her a bit of pink eye, seeing as she is a stoner.

I gave her a grey and brown outfit because they are natural tones and it is more in keeping with the Lemur theme.

I also gave her hair a slight yellow tinge to it, this is a result of too much smoking.


On to modelling!

Back to the drawing board

So after being initially happy with my design I changed my mind. I just didn't feel that she really stuck to the brief so I went back and re read the brief.

Pocahontas Billiams – “Willie’s  sister, she’s seven years old but much more relaxed and more knowing than her sibling. She wants to be a gorilla.”

I decided to keep some aspects of my original design but she still dramatically changed. 

The word "relaxed" was the what I focused on to create her character. What is relaxing? What could make her interesting a different? I then decided that for her to be relaxed she was going to smoke weed. Now I couldn't very well make a 7 year old girl smoke weed. To get around the legal issues of an under age child smoking weed I decided that it was OK because she was part Lemur and that seven in Lemur years is a a lot older than that of a human, so it was perfectly fine for her to smoke it.

I then begun my designs.

Initial Ideas

These are the sketches I did for my character. Originally I was quite happy with how she turned out.

At first I tried a simpler younger looking version, I had this idea because shes young, so a simple cartoon version of her would make her look young.

Seeing as shes based on a lemur I wanted her to be flexible, so I tried some sketches of her in unusual positions.

These were 2 possible hair designs I tried, the one on the right was thought of to yet again try to make her look younger. In the end I chose the one on the left with a few changes.

This is the final design for her.

I was very pleased with how she turned out to begin with, I liked her design but I was really happy with it. I didn't think it really stuck to the brief all that well. So I decided to change my design. I knew this was risky so far into the project but I didn't feel she fit the brief and I also decided that she would have been very difficult to model.

More research

Another good character to research was King Julian from Madagascar.

I almost forgot about him, but how could I? Hes a ring tailed lemur?! I had been contemplating making my characters an actual Lemur but I was still adamant to make her half and half.

I could still use King Julian as help though. He doesn't look exactly like a ring tailed lemur but you can tell just by looking at him that he is. The striped tail and the bright eyes and sure signs hes a Lemur.

More Character Design

I wanted my character to be human but have the traits of an animal. This is kinda like the Na'vi from James Camerons Avatar.

They still retain their human appearance but have the attributes of animals in the way they look and the way they act.
I liked that aspect of the Na'vi so I used that Idea for my character.



I like the animalistic qualities of the Na'vi, they are human in a way but have qualities of wild animals, they have long limbs and a tail, bright eyes and sharp teeth.

They are very agile and flexible, they have tails like a cat or monkey, mainly used for balance I'd assume.

Sharp fangs.

You can tell they look human but their ears and eyes are different from a humans, I like that aspect and will probably use that for my character

Character Design - Lemur

Out of the 5 charaters I chose the little girl.

I took a while deciding what I wanted her to be like. Did I want a her mainly human? or mainly animal. First things first was deciding what animal.

After ALOT of contemplating I settled on the ring tailed Lemur. I love how bright their eyes are and of course their long stripey tails. Their long limbs appealed to me also when designing my character.

I didnt want to make a character that was practically a Lemur, I wanted her to be human but with Lemur attributes. So the attributes I chose were, long limbs, big eyes, a stripey tail and the same ears.

New Course

I was quite torn between two briefs for this class.

I rather liked the idea of the "Chop Shop" as it relates to video games and the video games industry is where I would like to end up in the future.

I instead went for the third brief, the Character Design. It just appealed to me more, as I can work on doing some concept work and on modelling. I prefer animating right now, but I think its more to do with that I'm most confident in animating so this brief will help me broaden my knowledge and maybe I will enjoy modelling. I might even prefer it over animating, only time will tell.