This week, we continued work on our models and it was used as a support class for Mike and Rachel to help us. I further worked on the head of my model, and I focused on making the hair. I struggled at first as I found my character’s hair to be daunting but I thought I would just go for it and see how it turns out. I created the hair pieces by creating a cube, adding subdivision and loop cuts so I could sculpt it easier into hair spikes. I kept the hair for my character blocky so it could be stylised but still have a hair appearance. To make the hair, I would duplicate each spike and rescale and sculpt to create the rest of the hair using the mirror modifier for most parts of it.
After I finished with the hair, I exported the model as a .fbx and imported it into the file of my body. From there, I resized it and fit it onto the model and added some colour material so I could tell what part was what.
At this point, I decided that I was happy with what I had going for the model and that I didn’t think I would need to add her wings as I felt that it would be unnecessary detail for her model. I created her name badge by taking a simple cube and scaling it to be flatter before sizing it into a rectangle shape, then bevelling the edges.
At this stage, I was ready to begin UV Unwrapping. This time I found it a lot easier as I had learned from the last project. The biggest issues I ran into when unwrapping were my seams not being in the correct places. This was tricky for me to get my head around, but I had to add more seams around the collar area.
However, after unwrapping this it caused even bigger issues. It turns out I had faces lying underneath the collar and waistcoat from the original body before clothes were created, so I had to delete the faces and it fixed my UV issue.
This was my fixed UV.
This caused me to look under my model and I spent time getting rid of parts of the body which I would not need as they took up unnecessary space and also made it difficult for me to UV unwrap. I found out that the reason why I had these was because I accidentally joined these to the clothes earlier on in my project, which turned out to be a big mistake. Another mistake I also ran into was that I applied subdivision way too early into my project and it made it far harder for me to work with my model as I had way too much polygons. However, I was able to fix it even though it was very meticulous, at least I know for next time.
I successfully finished UV unwrapping my model and now it was time for me to import the .fbx objects into Substance painter. I decided I wanted to give her clothes fabric textures and I used the fabric materials in Substance to do so, and it worked well. However, I ran into another issue where my waistcoat’s UV map was stretched and I also had to go back and fix it.
It turned out that I had the smooth modifier on, so I had to disable it and it ended up fixing my issue. The texturing process in Substance was fairly straightforward and I was able to get through it without much hassle, and I actually had fun giving her different materials and textures. For her face, I went for a more unique texture and I did the face texture myself. I gave her a little blush and some freckles.
This is what she looked like after I finished texturing her. I am overall happy with the textures, especially the horns which I used a creature teeth material for which I adjusted to fit her colour palette. I gave her hair a cloudy mask to give some more texture, and I coloured different spikes separate colours to add a bit more variation.
Prop Work
I decided to take a break away from the character for a little bit to focus on making my prop. Her prop is meant to be a hotel porter cage, the ones they use to move luggage around. I drew one up in her concept design.
I took reference photos from Google to use to help me model my prop. I wanted to go for a golden aesthetic as the ones in Hotel Transylvania follow suit.
I made the poles of the cage out of a cube with the subdivision surface modifier before adding edge loops and scaling it upwards. I removed the top face of each end and bridged edge loops to give it a flat edge. I then used the move tool on edit mode to move the loops so I could give the pole the curved shape. After that, I duplicated it and rotated both of them inwards so it could give the sort of round cage aesthetic I was going for. Then, I added a mirror modifier to mirror them across. I then created the tray underneath out of a cube squashed down, and duplicated it and stretched it outwards to create a bottom outer rim. I also created a coat hanger by adding edge loops to one of the duplicated sized down poles and stretched them outwards to give a sort of enlarged end as to where the coats would hang. For decoration, I created a sort of egg shape object to bridge everything together nicely at the top.
I bevelled the edges of these to give them a smoother surface before moving onto the wheels, which were also made out of a cube with the subdivision surface modifier. I used the extrude along normals feature to give the wheels some detail like screws before adding the metal clasp on top.
After that, I joined them all together.
I then marked my seams on the model which was a very quick process due to the simple nature of the prop. I then exported my .fbx into Substance to begin texturing. I gave the poles a golden texture while keeping the tray of the cage wooden. I made the outer rim at the bottom of the tray a galvanised metal texture, and then applied that same one to the metal clasps above the wheels. For the wheels, I gave them a rubber texture and then exported all of the textures back into Blender where I could apply all of them to my object.
Character Armature
Now in the final stages of my character, I began the armature. I gave my character a simple armature by following the videos on Blackboard. I went for a simple pose to showcase her walking alongside the hotel porter cage, similar to the concept designs I made of her. 
I then began importing her .fbx model into Sketchfab, where I could set up her scene. I initially had issues with uploading her into Sketchfab, but I made it work by importing her .fbx first then importing her textures manually in the 3D Settings part.
I added a background using the background feature, and I changed the orientation of it around to give a nice ambience. I added three spot lights, and made them warm colours and dotted them around the scene. I wanted to emulate the warm hotel feeling that the Transylvania has. I also added bloom, colour balance, exposure settings, depth of field and grain to give the model more ambience.
Then, after that was done, I uploaded it to Sketchfab.
Sketchfab Link: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/complete-character-and-prop-d013b572fba7449681e9222665febee4