As I am finished with the three main phases of this assignment – Research, Character Design and Modelling – it is now time for me to make a reflection post and look back at the whole development process of this character and what went right and what went wrong. When I was researching the art style of Genndy Tartakovsky, there were a lot of things I have learned in the topic of creating characters with intentions, especially with action in mind, things like using prominent shapes, simple designs to allow me to focus on movement. It was great to get an insight to the mind of one of the greatest creative minds in the animation industry and see his philosophies and why he chooses them as I can use them as hints to develop further my own art style and creativity by taking what works and integrating them into my style.
The many different things I have learned from the research on Tartakovsky’s art style really helped me create a design concept that I am very happy with and thanks to this and the fact that I went over multiple different designs and then developed my favorite design even further led to a character that I personally feel is complete. The design that I have created allows for a lot of action and fluidity if the character were to be animated. As I have outlined in the development process, I gathered a lot of inspirations for the character and the prop and used them to make a mood board; this helped me by giving the design a lot of creative direction and it served as a reference for whenever I wanted to try specific details such as the mechanical point between the forearm and upper arm which took inspiration from the arms of C-3PO, the famous droid from Star Wars.
When it came to making the character model, I would be lying if I said it was easy, however it was never meant to be. This assignment was meant to challenge us afterall, otherwise there would be no point in it, however I did struggle a lot with trying to translate my character into 3D from the concepts, there are some areas that do not look as I envisioned, with my main points of contention in the eyes, as with the way I drew the eye shapes, it was hard to make it look the same in 3D and I ended up with the eye holes appearing on the surface, I also had a lot of trouble with the UV mapping as I am not personally used to creating 3D human characters, therefore I had to keep going back and changing values on the skin materials as it would end up looking too shiny, and some of the different UV shells that are together in the final model looked stitched together, however I still enjoyed how it ended up in the end after I finally managed to figure everything out. This was also my first time using the sculpting tool, it was also hard to get a handle of at the start but thanks to the many tutorials I have been provided with, I was able to figure out all of the necessary tools and techniques and use them to add a lot of intricate details in areas like the clothes and certain bodily areas like the eyebrows, neck, chest and cheeks. Overall, I am happy with my final outcome and am excited to see where my future lies with character sculpting.