to Begin modelling I blocked out my character using basic shapes. I then sculpted these basic shapes using Remesh and Dynotopo. Ramesh increases and decreases the geometry of a shape and dynotopo (dynamic topology)adds topology.
Sculpting
As this was my first time using Blender it took e a while to get accustomed to the program. I revisited Lecturer and youtube tutorials often for guidance. I often found myself using short Keys from Maya when switching between programs for different projects. I experimented alot with Sculpting this model making copies and deleting shapes I wasn’t happy with until I achieved my goal. Below is a picture of a model I sculpted following this very useful tutorial.
I found this tutorial particularly useful. Below is the link to the tutorial then screenshots of my results.
The gnome tutorial introduced enabled me to use the dynotopo tool building on lecture tutorials.
A lecturer advised me this week to use masks to make the smaller details of the face. The mask tool works by painting over in black the areas you do not want to be affected by sculpting’s seen in the screenshots below inverted the mask to smooth out the mouth and nostril shapes I cut using the draw tool.
I tried using the solidify modifier on the skirt décor to thicken it but still, it did not conform to the skirt the way I wanted it to. To make the final skirt décor I copied the smoothed outskirt then scaled it vertically so it pultruded from the skirt mesh and applied the symmetry modifier to the eyes, ears, wings and shoes.
I followed the tutorial below to make the skirt.
The shoes gave me the most trouble when sculpting. I manipulated a cube in edit mode to create the basic shape and silhouette of the shoe and made multiple copies to experiment with. Wings were also a challenge and I explored multiple methods to model them. Originally I used boolean curves until a lecturer advised me to build the bones of the wings out of cubes and then subdivide and smooth them. The skin of the wings are extruded planes with manipulated vertexes made with the multi-cut tool.
Below are the screenshots of the final sculpted Blender model before Retopology. The side view in the drawn character sheet was not accurate to how the charters front view would rotate so I had to improvise sculpting here. I also disliked how thin the waist was in the charter sheet so I made the bottom half of the charter wider to be more appealing. The challenges and experimentation were worth it because I’m very happy with the cute and smooth character I achieved and I now feel like I can confidently sculpt and navigate Blender.
