Week 1: Cow Body

The following are screenshots of the progress of the body of the cow model:

Doing the body model was much harder than expected but the tutorial helped me get through it. It also showed me several ways to make a bipedal character, cartoonic or realistic. One such way is to use nothing but a cube with a preplanned amount of subdivisions to roughly create the character's shape before going into detail. I also learned how to connect multiple models together, something which I had no knowledge of previously as I relied on grouping for the most part.

Week 1: More Spiderman Poses

Here are two extra poses I made for the Spiderman rigged model:

This first pose is not based on any picture or the sorts, rather it is simply how I'd imagine he would pose while getting ready to fight or while observing an enemy. This pose was obviously hard to do due to the lack of references but I am honestly rather proud of it. I tried to apply as much weight as I can for the thigh and I made heavy amounts of adjustments to his spine, feet and fingers. I screwed up with the neck though and I tried fixing it. Alas, I failed but this error is otherwise unnoticeable.

Now, this second pose isn't actually Spiderman's pose (rather, it is Wolverine of the X-men) but I actually wanted to try this rather cool pose. This pose is inspired by one of the X-men movie posters (forgot which movie). The claws were surprisingly difficult to model to make it seem like it is sharp and of the right length. The rest of the pose was rather simple and I made small changes to the spine, chest, knee, feet and hands. Not to mention the head and the arms, along with the elbow. Overall, I like this second pose and I am also proud of it.

Week 2: Character Poses

These are some poses I gave to a rigged model downloaded from the internet, based on several images found on Yahoo.

Making this pose is surprisingly difficult as the model itself is very thin, unlike the more muscular character in the image. The expression of the character was fairly difficult to do as I had no idea how the character's face controls were supposed to work but alas, I made a close resemblance. The arms, as simple as it looks, is actually the toughest part of this pose to make, along with the shoulders. As the character is feeling tense, the shoulder needs to be raised but not too much to avoid exaggeration. The arms need to be bent properly with the wrist not being too high or too low to display anger. Clenching or the fist was fairly simple in contrast. In addition, the spine was given a curve to make the character appear more alive. As the lower half of the character's body was not revealed, I made a little extra by making the model kneel.

Unlike the previous one, this one is far more feminine. The arms, face and body curve proved to be little trouble. Initially, the model's right hand wasn't able to reach the floor like the woman on the image. However, after tweaking the auto stretch feature on the wrist, I managed to get it touch the floor. In addition, I reduced the size of the smile to make the model more "cool" and calm rather than sad. Below is a screenshot of how it looked like before it touches the floor.

Other than that, the lower portion of the model was especially hard to create as we are only given one angle to model it from so the front and back view had to be made based purely on guessing or imagination. I made a lot of adjustments to the knees to display weight, which is also very difficult but I did my best.

Another feminine pose. This one was made rather quickly as I was beginning to get familiar with the rig controls. Still, I had difficulty, especially with the legs. I actually had fun creating the model's facial expression as I always liked the idea of a confident looking character with a cheeky smile. Though the image does not really show such a smile, it was pretty close and I personally think a cheeky smile looks better on the model. Other than that, I had little difficulty in this pose compared with the other two.

Week 2: Spiderman Pose

These are screenshots of Spiderman's rig in his unique pose. Posing was a lot harder than I ever expected and I know well enough what to expect in the future in posing a model.

Week 1: Cowhead

This is how my Cowhead turns out after modeling it. I must say that I learned quite a great deal on how to model something through extrusion and honestly, I had no idea that the different tools can be set to be based on the X, Y and Z axis. The tutorial introduced me to this feature. I actually had fun making the Cowhead and I was also anxious to see the results while doing it. However, I realize that making it is rather tedious, difficult and very tiring and though I cannot wait to start on human models, I now know well enough how difficult it can get. In fact, making the Cowhead is not flawless:

While I was attempting to mirror the geometry of the head, the eye-sockets, which is supposed to be a hole closing in slowly inside, was partially closed in. I was rather stunned when I see the results of mirroring as I was following closely to the tutorial. I then theorized that it could be because the edges of the hole were too close to one another or the tool just made a mistake in thinking that the eye-sockets should be mirrored too. Hence, I tried fixing this problem. I once tried to re-mirror the geometry but it did no improvements. I then revert to something more conventional.

I selected the newly created faces and then delete off the inner parts of the socket, leaving only the edges. I then redid the socket's inner parts through extrusion and some modification, effectively redoing the eye-socket part of the tutorial. This fixes the problem but leaves me with potentially unsymmetrical eye-sockets. Regardless, I had the result I wanted and I was satisfied. I then moved on with the rest of the tutorial and finished up the Cowhead model.

Week 1 Lab 1: Character

 

Name: Mr. Claw

Tagline: Sharpens his claw with a beaming smile

Catchphrase: "My claws are made of gold."

Backstory: An unusually intelligent lion found by rangers as a cub, Mr. Claw was raised within human society. Brilliantly smart, gentle and capable of human speech, Mr. Claw became a media icon and frequently appeared in speeches and presentations. Now at the top of the human world, he openly welcomed his "fellow" humans into his mansions. Though cut off from his kin, he is normally seen sharpening his claws; a reminder to the humans that he is still a lion by heart. Sometimes, however, all he wanted was to be with his lion kins.