Blog Three - Modeling Tests!
This was a big week for me! I finally got to model something! I got quite lucky with a group full of incredibly talented storyboard artists who can churn out lots of work, so I was given the opportunity and privilege to start modeling the base body for all of the magical girls! The idea is to give all three girls the same body base with different faces, hairstyles, and clothing. So with that in mind, I was ready to start my modeling process!
I am set on modeling as much as I can by hard sculpting in Maya, because in my opinion its ten times harder to retopologize a Zbrush mesh than it is to just model something with correct geometry to begin with. All summer, I made little game models reminiscent of PS1 and DS graphics, so I have a grasp of how to make easily rigged, low-poly character meshes, so I am happy I was picked for this job!
So, how did I make this model? The short answer is a couple of cylinders, lots of precise extruding, and using the soft select key. Luckily, I did a good job keeping my character turnarounds proportionate, so the modelling body went off without a hitch. I essentially extruded a cylinder for the torso, bridged only the middle section of the cylinder's bottom half to start the legs, and repeated the extruding to finish the legs and feet. The arms I started as separate cylinders, but I kept my edge count in mind and was able to nicely connect the armpit area and fill out the upper chest and neck easily by, you guessed it, extruding.
The hands were a little harder. Making the fingers was easily as it was just more cylinder extruding, but making the palm look normal from the side was much harder, and getting the thumb attached was a little bit of a nightmare. With all of that intense geo merging and bridging, I ended up having to kite the geometry a bit to fit the more low-poly arm geometry, but no one can tell, and I managed a triangle-less gase sculpt.
