Overall, this part of the course definitely challenged me in various ways to incorporate the techniques that i had learnt in the previous topic, as well as closely referencing Genndy’s appealing character designs to take on a more cartoony style. Initially, I had designed the character to not have visible eyes as a fringe covered the upper half of her face, however I soon realised that it would be easier for the characters’ expressions to be expressed if her eyes could be seen, and therefore that was part of the model’s design that I tweaked and improved upon to make it more visually dynamic.
I really enjoyed working on this project in comparison to the prior ones last term due to a higher level of creative freedom and being able to explore and experiment with the software of both blender and substance painter. However, I came across many issues through blender as I continued to struggle slightly with the UV mapping and wrapping sections as I had previously. I had to reload the file several times in order to fix issues with the mesh that I had accidentally overlooked, in particular whenever I was sculpting the geometry of my character’s mouth (I later realised that this was due to me having applied the mirror modifier to the face too early, causing the mesh of the upper and lower lip to overlap in the middle, which I fixed by separating ands merging the vertices in the centre) I soon learned I did however particularly enjoy both importing and posing the character in sketchfab, as I have previously experience with posing my real life action figures to animate them in stop motion, therefore making it reminiscent to a skill I already keen on.
Moving forward into the second semester of first year, I will need to further practice using the UV mapping tool as I recognise that I still struggle with understanding how to unwrap and arrange maps effectively. I would also really like to explore creating character models that utilise more asymmetrical features to add more personality to my projects. Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of this character model.