Week 21 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Model Progress & Life Drawing

Butcher Model Progress



Eventually I was getting near completion of my model, so I went back to correcting the head and fixing its topology. I finally fixed the head structure and it started to really resemble my appearance. When it comes to the hairstyle, I decided to block out a basic one, as giving it a more 3 dimensional shape would use up too many triangles. I will make sure I texture this area correctly to improve it and hide its simplistic shape. The area I'm most happy about is the nose and mouth loops as they turned out surprisingly good to me. I wasn't expecting these to look so similar to mine.

Unwrapped Model

The first unwrapped sections of the model. This texture is going to be a 1024x1024 24bit Targa. I unwrapped only half of the model, as I wanted to use more of the texture space to get more details. The textured half of the body can then be copied, mirrored and attached to complete the model. What's seen here is unwrapped arms, hands, aproon, shirt, trousers and head.
The next unwrapped texture, next week is going to be a 512x512 24bit Targa.

Life Drawing

16.2.15

Drawings like the large, brown one above were really useful too. I worked really hard on imitating the strong foreshortening here. This isn't easy, but I think my choice of medium was of advantage to me, as I used charcoal and white chalk. These materials, in combination with brown midtone paper, have helped me add the darks, as well as the whites to give my piece a stronger "feel" of depth. I'm really happy about this one. Also, during this session we did not have a model so we had various students pose for eachother (different body types and heights). I was really happy about this brave pose one of my class mates did for us.

Week 20 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Final Concept, Model Progress & Life Drawing

Final Concept


I chose the 1st idea in row C. It looked the most natural to me, and it didn't have any cold colours. I could always change some of its areas and colours, in case it won't look as planned when modelled in 3DS Max.

Butcher Model Progress






I focused on mostly modelling using quads, not traingles as it would be easier to work with. This way my model has loops in its topology, allowing me to edit it faster.

The toughest part to model was the first, and that was the head. Adjusting all the edges and verts to make the loops even was taking me a very long time. I needed to time away from it so I moved onto the body and ontinued blocking out its shapes. I had much better progress with the body so far.

The area under the aproon was hard to get to, to see clearly what I was modelling there, as my view was blocked by other parts of the model. Even the x-ray mode wasn't helping much as it was hard to tell which edges were the right ones.

Life Drawing



8.2.15

The simpler drawings, such as those done with straight lines or with strong pencil marks have helped me see how I could define a 3 dimensional form/shape. I hope to now know better how to define these using limited tools, mediums, materials or even geometry (especially when modelling in 3DS Max). I really like how I used the darker/softer pencil to separate sections of the body and push some limbs more toward me by darkening the area behind them.

Week 19 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Tonal/Colour Studies & Life Drawing

Colour Moodboard



Aside from this one I also made a smaller mood board, focused on colour. It's a simpler collection of images (mainly paintings) that represented different colour variations, which I could use in my  colour studies later on. I made sure to collect reference that shows mostly butchers here, also in different times and cultures. I could use this later to define my character more, as to me colour is very essential in making a character look unique.


Chosen Idea Value & Colour Studies

After the last weeks silhouettes/ideas I selected the most interesting few and decided on one that I took forward. Firstly I used photo bashing to add detail to this idea; that combined with a bit of painting over. For that idea I spent some time, carefully selecting the most appropriate tonal values for each piece of clothing and I have managed to come up with 9 different tonal variations. I aimed at creating more variations but eventually felt that it was enough experimentation; I could essentially go back to the value studies and make new ones if I felt that my chosen ones did not look well enough to me with colour.

The next step here was to again, pick a few more successful ideas, select the best/most unique one and spend some time on applying colour layers onto it to develop more convincing ideas.

My characters clothing still seemed empty at this stage. I added a few details by painting over on the knife pouch, the belt and also the boots. The boots now have these small patterns and strings on the upper section. I'll try to apply these extra details at the end of my project (when texturing). 

I picked the 9th one to take forward, then copied it into 3 rows and then made more copies horizontally. For each row of ideas, I used a different colour palette, taken from a different painting from my colour mooodboard. I picked 5 of the ideas here, marked with a "tick". 

In my style guide for this project, I was advised to use mostly warm colours, so 2 of the chosen ideas in the middle row needed to be scrapped, as they had too much cold blue in them. I would have kept them if they only had small hints of blue but I couldn't decide on where to put that colour.

Life Drawing



2.2.15



Tonal pieces like the one above are the most useful now, as they taught me a few things about fabric folds and how to separate values of different surfaces such as skin, and cotton. I have used charcoal and white chalk to give surface depth to the model's body and also other objects like the fabrics placed on her legs. This should really help me in the future, when painting my character's texture. Also to understand how fabrics fold/hang around our legs, arms and shoulders etc.

Week 18 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Moodboard, Silhouettes & Life Drawing

Moodboard


After gathering some of my reference last week, I now focused on selecting the most appropriate reference and photographs for my moodboard. I have reassembled this moodboard many times, until I got to one I was fairly happy with. The point here was to have it focused more around the character I was deciding on, which was the butcher. I've included some photograph of clothes and also armour. The armour was there to help me understand how metallic surfaces look, in case my character had metallic features in his equipment or clothes. Some of the clothes (the older looking ones) have numerous folds and creases and these will be really helpful when I move onto drawing the texture for the clothing. It will help me paint more convincing clothing surface.

Some of the first photographs I wanted to add were the ones on top-left. These show different hairstyles, beards and unique facial features. They also show faces of different ages, so I can have some idea of how I could alter my characters face if I felt I should make him older or younger. I could even consider changing his hair and skin colour to suggest him as a traveller or someone from a different region of the world. Other photographs include shoes, boots, butcher knives and belts. even such small pieces of equipment/clothing can have a strong impact on my characters look. It's important to try out different styles to hopefully end up with the best possible combination.

Butcher Character Silhouettes

























The bottom 2 rows were my initial ideas (apart from the last one). I was not happy with them, partly because I spent too much time at this stage and didn't have as much variation as I planned. I've put too much detail into those too early. Then after my initial review of the ideas by a tutor, I went back to develop some fresh ideas, I added the last idea and also the top row; to my surprise these were the strongest ideas. The fact I went away from these for a day and came back with a fresh mind helped me a lot. I felt ready to move on and decided to use the top left idea.

Life Drawing







26.1.15

I think I would struggle with modelling of my upcoming character if it wasn't for all the Life Drawing sessions I did in the past, including the ones now.



26.1.15

These proved to be really helpful, as my visual library has surely expanded and allowed me to understand the shape of the human body better; modelling should feel much easier to get through because of this.