This assignment was incredibly challenging and I definitely overshot my abilities. The model was complicated for a first sculpt, and despite it being very informative, it created a lot of stress. In hindsight, I would’ve made it simpler, because despite the fact I’m more comfortable with biped humanoid characters, this was a large undertaking. There’s some stretching in the textures from posing my character, which was definitely a trial and error process for me. The model is well constructed, but could be better proportionally.

My favourite part was texturing, I think it demonstrated my skill as an artist, and it was fun to experiment more with Substance. I think in terms of meeting the brief, I succeeded, my model is cute. In terms of my improvement with 3D work, I can see so much improvement between my first assignment and this one, everything about the modelling process went smoother, my UV maps were leagues better. I genuinely think the effort I put into learning better technique with unwrapping helped me get a higher resolution with my model.

For the future, I want to practice sculpting characters with more cartoon features, and I want to get the hang of non-human characters as well. Over the summer, I will be doing sculpt studies, practice with retopology, and study anatomy. With this plan, I hope to see even more improvement next year.

I am so happy to call this project finished!! It was a struggle at times, it brought me to tears and I needed an extension in order to meet the deadline, but I’m so happy with the result. It’s very rewarding to see this project come to fruition, I’m very proud of this. I decided to do it at night, as if she’s walking through the forest, following fireflies, but I also think doing a sunshine version would’ve been cool to show the vibrancy of the colours.

Here’s some screenshots of the details.

You can see some stretching in the textures from the modelling process, but in general I think this was a very successful first attempt at a character sculpt.

This was a quick sketch of the pose I wanted very generally. I changed the fairy/firefly to be more simple in the final render of the model due to the fact that fairies aren’t really a concept in Japan, it’s more spirits and demons.

 

I wasted a whole day trying to pose this character. The Blender pose tool wouldn’t work for me, and I tried rigging in Maya. I don’t mind skin weights and I appreciated the practice in rigging, but it wasn’t successful in the end. I emailed Henry and he very graciously sent me a video that helped me figure out how to work it.

This was the first attempt, I tried importing it into Sketchfab just to see I was on the right track, and then the eye wouldn’t work correctly.

Henry explained it was probably something to do with the UVs and I needed to use the same FBX. I was, so I don’t understand why it wasn’t working for me. I tried his suggested solutions, and it didn’t work. In an act of desperation, I went back into Maya and exported the file again, which seemed to work. I needed to redo the pose, but at least the textures uploaded correctly.

This was my second attempt. I like elements from both poses, but I’m happy with the finished result.

I imported back into Maya to put the environment, accessories and model all together after unwrapping and exporting the environment.

I will be texturing the environment with materials I imported from Substance Painter’s Resource Community.

This screenshot is before I fixed the UV issues that caused the shadow on the biggest rock.

I referenced actual masks for the kitsune mask, which is a very iconic piece of Japanese imagery. I think in hindsight it’s a little too long in the face, but I did what I could in the time crunch.

The mask’s textures aren’t centred because the symmetry tool wouldn’t cooperate with me, and at this point it’s the day before deadline. It’s a small detail in the context of the whole model, so I’ll settle for now.

 

 

So first I baked the texture maps, which didn’t go exactly to plan. At this point, I am very close to deadline and I don’t have time to go back and meticulously clean up the model and mess with the settings. The body bake in particular created a lot of issues for me around the eyes and forehead, so I left it and only baked the low poly mesh. I’m not a fan of the mouth, it’s smaller and less defined than on the high poly sculpt, but I’ll make do in texturing her. Her nose is also smaller and less defined due to this as well.

I’m thankful now that I put a lot of effort into the retopo because it means I can use the low poly sculpt without sacrificing too many details.

Lel was with me while I did this, Henry had previously helped him with his character so he helped me do the best I could.

I have really enjoyed texturing so far, I want to hand paint a lot of the details because I think it will emphasise her cuteness.

My colour palette was composed of pinks I really wanted her to feel warm and adorable. To do this, I made her hair a nice warm pink, layered on the blush, initially had her eyelashes light, and made her eyes stand out with oranges and yellows.

Kitsune masks are usually white with red, but fox ears are orange and black. I did two versions, you can see the black/dark brown and white combination below.

I was going to make the flowers on her outer garment were supposed to be a lighter pink and dark pink, but I accidentally pressed multiply on that layer and it created the below result. I liked both, and I think both work, but people really liked the first screenshot the most.

I darkened her kimono so the trim on her outer shirt could be white. I think it’s a little too close to her skin tone now that I look at it. I don’t think it’s too bad with the flowers on it, and the white trim help break it up, but I would change the tone of the colour next time.

After I got feedback from a group of my peers and friends, I decided to stick with the multiply layer. It fits with the colour scheme, even if it isn’t as reminiscent of sakuras than I’d like.

I’ve officially done the retopology on most of the sculpt, it was actually a little more stressful this time than the classwork. In all though, I think she looks really cute. I’m going to UV unwrap her after I remodel the hair. I also need to add her belt, which I will do after retopologising her hair.

I just completely restarted modelling the hair, I didn’t like the shape or the flow. I made it more chunky and less detailed.

Placing the models side by side, I like the first sculpt’s face more than the second, and the new volume in the hair makes the ears a little small. I think I can remedy that in posing though, so I’m not too worried. To be fair to myself, the new hair is definitely an improvement, and she looks more child-like and soft with her rounder features. In hindsight, I’d do something similar to artists who sculpt 3D anime/cartoon style models and only sculpt the line for the mouth so I could’ve put more expression on her face. To me, she seems a little blank, but I don’t want to keep fiddling with the little details.

I then went back into Maya to finish the retopo.

I then smoothed the model to create this:

I’ve began to UV unwrap my character, which is going quite quickly actually. I think the stuff I learnt in the Animated Narratives module helped make this process efficient and effective. I am quite proud due to the fact I struggled quite badly with UV unwrapping earlier in the semester.

With the model done, I imported her into Substance and began texturing.

 

I used quite a few references of human retopos to make sure I was getting the most out of my sculpt. Here are a few I used.

 

 

I’ve began retopologising the model, it’s a little messy in my opinion, has more polys than necessary, but I can edit them later. I want to make the retop as high quality as possible in case there’s issues with baking the mesh. Alec told me to only retop as much as I need to to save polys and time. The limit for polygons is 40k, so I’m very conscious of how detailed I’m being.

I’ve finished the body retop, I think the fingers may need redone, as they aren’t great in terms of quality and cleanliness.

This is further progress. I think the hair is a little messy and I like it even less the further I get into this project. I’m going to finish retopologising everything before going back and remodelling it.

A closer look at the hair almost done.

I’ve very nearly finished the high poly sculpt! The hair is almost done, I just need to add the last few details. I also sculpted the ears and just need to refine them now! I don’t think her face is cute enough, so I might go back and soften her features further.

This is the finished sculpt. I’m not a big fan of the hair, I don’t know how to feel about it to be completely honest but I need to make quicker progress as I’m already behind by at least a week or two due to changing my concept.

I think there are just too many small details in the hair, which makes it stand out in a bad way.

For my first sculpt, this was a good attempt in my opinion. I could work on the proportions, as I think she’s a bit weird in terms of that. She has a mix between semi realism and cartoon, which makes it a little strange.

I started the retopo process on the model.

I’ve made quite a bit of progress, I’ve finished the fingers and I’ve started on the clothes. There’s two layers to the outfit, with an outer layer and an inner top. The inner top will just be a small square that I’d model to fit.

The outfit is sort of an amalgamation of different traditional Japanese clothing, a full kimono would be far too laborious and complicated for my first sculpt. I think I’m pushing it as it is, so I’ve decided to simplify while keeping elements of kimonos. Traditional and historical Japanese clothing usually has an underlayer and an outer garment. Layers are key.

I plan to pull out the bottom part of the shirt and add a belt around the mid section.

I think it’s quite cute already, I want to soften her features as she’s coming out a bit too semi realistic. I’m not trying to copy my concept art too closely for my first attempt at 3D sculpting, but I do want to make her a little more cartoony.

As far as texturing these clothes go, I’ll have to do a very simplified design because Kimonos and other traditional dress are usually very intricate with lots of colour, embroidery and small details. I know I won’t be able replicate that level of detail in the time I have, so I will have to be very particular. I think I’m going to use sakura blossoms as part of the ’embroidery’ because they’re recognisable and also very cute.

The last thing I did this week was finish the clothing and start sculpting the hair.

Today in class we learnt about retopology, Henry provided us a model to retop, which was the elephant one we had previously attempted modelling.

This was the progress I’d made in class, I will try to finish it before starting my retopo, but I don’t know if I’ll have time.

I actually find it quite relaxing to do, it’s a little tedious but I quite like the process.

As for my model, I finished the blockout and began sculpting! I’m very happy with my progress so far, I’m sure there’s more efficient ways to do this, but I’m taking this at my pace.

I have the general body shape and proportions that I want. The hands are probably a wee bit small, but we’ll see as I go along. I need to sculpt the fingers and refine the socks. The clothing will be my next focus after I finish blocking the face.

I began blocking out the bird concept. Everything was going okay, until I hit a creative roadblock. I realized I was overthinking it, and due to outside influences making concentrating on work difficult at the moment, it dawned on me that this was the wrong direction to go in. I wasn’t having fun trying to put it together, and due to a lot of medical and mental issues, it wasn’t worth fighting with the concept when I wasn’t thrilled to begin with. So, after discussing it with my lecturers, I decided to go back to the drawing board.

Birds are tricky, I was making it a challenge for myself already, and for a first time sculpt I think I was being a bit too ambitious. After my mark for the first module, I think I was focusing too hard on what would get me marks rather than actually being something I’d enjoy the process of doing. I understand there will be points in the future where I will have to work on projects and sculpts that aren’t my cup of tea, but as of now, with the other module being a heavy workload alongside this, it seems like the responsible thing to do. I don’t want this to be easy, but I’d like to be inspired while working on this so I stay motivated, as that’s an issue I’m struggling with at the moment.

So, I went back to Pinterest and began collecting more inspiration.

I also looked on Sketchfab, as this is a 3D project, I decided it made sense to look at a platform where 3D artists share their work. I looke up cute characters and liked ones that I thought fit sort of what I was looking for.

3D models liked by Ellie.Wilson (@Ellie.Wilson) – Sketchfab

I particularly love Asian mythology, I think the artwork and stories are beautiful and a wealth of inspiration. I decided to do research into kitsunes and kumihos.

Kitsunes are Japanese fox spirits that are usually quite generous and curious, they’re more likely to be friendly towards humans and even live among them masked as human. In mythology, they’re known to be very intelligent and possess magical abilities that become more powerful the older they get. As they age, they obtain more tails which is why they can be called ‘nine tailed foxes’.

Kumihos are Korean fox spirits that seduce men to eat them. They are extremely beautiful and charming, they usually have one aspect of their fox roots even when displayed as a human, like their ears or tail. The name kumiho literally translates to ‘nine tailed fox’, in their spirit forms they possess all nine tails. Unlike kitsunes, they are never presented as benevolent, they’re always evil in Korean mythology and legends. I think they’re a pretty cool spirit

The idea for my model would be to give her ears, as she’s already going to be a little more complicated than my previous idea. She’s got her ears on display, but hiding her tail. I think I’m going to make her a kitsune, the more benevolent and curious nature lends well to the cute character theme of this assignment. I could work either concept, but I think the kitsune is the better idea.

I drew up a few quick concept sketches to get an idea for her character.

I think the challenges I’m going to face will be going way too complicated with the details. I’ll need to keep that in mind as I sculpt. This may end up backfiring on me, but it will be an educational experience. I won’t be able to improve or do more complicated sculpts without attempting them.

Since I wanted a more humanoid character, I also blocked out a basic humanoid shape. After doing some more research and finalising a design, I’ll sculpt the details on.