This assignment was challenging but I enjoyed learning how to model a character. I enjoyed looking into Genndy Tartakovsky as his work was something I grew up watching. He has a very distinct and unique style, but it differs between the shows he has done and due to this I felt I struggled to stylise my own design. After researching more into Genndy I did see one thing he keeps consistent throughout, and that is big shapes and out of proportion styles. I tried to adapt my own designs to reflect this.

I found the modelling of the character body easy to do as I followed the class tutorials and tweaked them to suit the style of my character. The issues started when I began to create the clothing. The first issue I came across was that the duplicated torso I was using for the coat was also duplicating the mirror from the torso which I didn’t really want, however I was able to work with this and just continue on with the rest of the model. The next issue was when I started to seam and UV map, when selecting the edges for creating seams it was looping through a lot of the model and I didn’t want that as I was only wanting to mark seams on a selected section of a body part. My way around this was to select each edge individually, which ended up being very time consuming! Once I was happy with each components UV map, I started the process of getting each one into Substance and texturing it. I started with the moth body but found that when I had the texture applied and imported it back into blender that it was covering the whole model and not that specific part.  I continued with joining all the parts together, bar the prop and importing it into Substance Painter as a whole model UV map. After texturing in Substance I baked them and found that there was an issue with overlapping vertex/facing issues on the models wings. I ended up having to message into our discord to see if I could get some assistance in resolving this and managed to get a response that was accurate and therefore allowed me to get this issue resolved. I found that the finalising stages of this model where the most challenging but it seemed to stem from a lack of knowledge in the modelling stages that caused small mistakes within the model. I feel like this all comes down to a lack of knowledge and confidence in the software and as this was my first character model it was expected for it not to go smoothly. I feel like I need to spend more time on personal projects on Blender and watch Youtube tutorials to build up my confidence in using it.

Even with all these issues I’m happy with how the model turned out even with all the flaws it may have. I feel like this has been a big learning curve for me and that as time goes on I should grasp a better understanding of the software and start to become quicker in the processes, this will mean that I don’t get as stressed up to the deadline as all these issues have delayed getting the project complete in a comfortable timeframe.

I initially wanted to try and texture all the individual components of my model separately so firstly I focused on getting the coat seamed and UV mapped.

I used a face checker to make sure that the coat didn’t have any n-gons and that there was little to no triangles.

I then exported the UV map as an FBX and then imported it into Substance Painter. I started to look at getting a nice shiny look to the coat as it was going to have a “wet” look.

I looked into different images of a yellow raincoat to get an idea for what kind of shine from the texture I was looking to achieve.

I then started to UV map the rest of the components of the model.

Once I had all my UV maps done I then started to texture. However, when I baked the mesh maps I realised something was seriously wrong with the wings of my character as I was getting blotches on the textures I had made. I did try searching on google but couldn’t find a resolution to this problem so I asked in our discord and thankfully got a really helpful response about how to check that the faces are the correct way.

When I checked my model I realised this was the culprit to my issue and spent quite a bit of time fixing it but eventually managed to get my model entire blue… which is what I wanted!

When I applied the armature to my model I realised that something wasn’t quite right as certain parts just were not moving the way they should be. Charlie in the class had been having the same issue so I was able to use the tutorial on YouTube that he did and rectify this.

I knew the pose I wanted my character to have but without learning weight painting it made it very difficult to move into the proper style I had envisioned. I improvised though and after playing around with it for quite some time I managed to move the arms into somewhat of the correct position.

I wanted the candle to glow in my scene but wasn’t too sure on how to carry over an emission setting. So I looked up a tutorial on YouTube on how to create emissions in Sketchfab itself and I found it very useful! I had issues with getting the candle texture to import as I was either able to get the eye textures or get the candle textures but not both. I worked for quite a few hours on this but unfortunately I just couldn’t resolve it myself. So, instead of the candle being textured in substance I just used blender colours to add a colour to it as I knew that I was going to add the emissions to the flame anyway and felt that it would work out okay.

Once in Sketchfab I looked into that Youtube tutorial however, I found that it doesn’t create and emissions as I had hoped. I played around with the Sketchfab editing settings and found a spot light, so I positioned this at the candle flame and played around with the softness, brightness and angle until I was happy.

When the character was in Sketchfab I noticed this flaw on the inside on the sleeve. I went into edit and scuplt mode on my model in Blender but was unable to work out how this had happened. Due to it being on the inside on the arm, and me not having any time left to rectify it, I felt like it would just have to do!

Upon uploading my Sketchfab model I rotated around to inspect it… I notice I’ve made a bit of an oopsie!  The hand holding the candle is the wrong way and the thumb should be point outwards. I tried to see if I’d a Blender file with the pose done without the armature joined, unfortunately, I didn’t!  Although this maybe isn’t too noticeable, it’s been another BIG learning curve for me, to make sure that I save my Blender file separately  before I apply the armature so that if I notice any small flaws they should be easier rectified. I’m annoyed at myself as I’m a bit of a perfectionist and this minor mistake is a lot bigger in my eyes now that I’ve noticed it!  We live and we learn… I move on this time!

And with that…. this horrible ordeal was over! A great learning curve for the future as almost every step I had issues that weren’t easily rectified (my inexperience likely didn’t help the matter)

But… “Protect the Light” is complete!

https://skfb.ly/oPnKP

Once I had modelled all the individual parts of the character, I started to work on joining them together into one object.  I had the torso, waist/legs, hands and head all separate. Firstly I grabbed my edges and made sure they were level by doing “Shift+S”. I then joined the two parts I wanted to join together, after that I selected the edge on the free part and the main part and selected bridge edge loops. I had to do this a couple of times as I was some parts had more edges than others and this caused a few mistakes but I was able to resolve. I then made sure to go around the newly created faces and dissolve some edges to make sure I was working with quads and not triangles.

After modelling the characters body I started looking at modelling the clothing and adding the details to it.

My character was designed to wear a yellow raincoat so I duplicated the torso and then added solidify to it. Initially when creating the hood I used a sphere and cut loops for the moths ears, deleted the faces at the top and the bottom to create the hooded shape and then joined the hood and coat together by connecting edge loops. When in class and talking to Mike, he discussed about the triangles and n-gons in my model, so I spent a lot of class rectifying these and making sure that everything was made up of quads and as little triangles as possible. We also discussed how I created the hood and that if using a sphere I should have tilted the top faces forward and deleted off, or used a cube and applied a subdivision to round it off into a more spherical shape. When discussing this I realised that I had made the model more complicated by creating it as I had and therefore I deleted the hood and remodelled it as a cube with a subdivision. I did attempt to use multires on the coat to add in crease details, however I kept running into issues with this and no matter how much I tried to rectify them I was never able to resolve so I decided to just move on and proceed without using multires on this model. I will start looking into more tutorials and practice with using multires as its something that is completely new to me and I obviously don’t have the confidence to successfully apply it yet.

By doing this I reduced my use of triangles in the model and made the next processes easier.

When bridging the edge loops to the coat this time I came across another issue where there was a bulge that I couldn’t smooth.

I researched into what could cause this and found a blog that someone had made about having the same issue. This stated about interior flipped faces, so I used the “shift+n” and then tried to bridge edge loops again and this seemed to resolve the issue.

I spent time this week focusing on my UV maps and making sure I placed seams accordingly. I struggle with this process quite a lot so I made sure to allocate the time into making sure they were done to the best of my ability and understanding. When looking over some UV maps I had done I realised that the sleeves weren’t seamed enough and the UV map lost details in the texturing process so I made more seams and adjusted accordingly. I then joined all the parts together and created one UV map for texturing.

Class Workshop

Coursework

When modelling my characters head I followed the class tutorial and due to this I decided to re-do it as I felt it was too human like and it was not the design I wanted.

On my second design, I really focused on making sure that I got the correct head shape before continuing on with the details on the face. I wanted to follow Genndy’s design within the facial features and create something that wasn’t fully proportional and more cartoon-like.

I found it fairly easy to follow along with the topology workshop and I understand the importance of using good topology in my models as this definitely helped further down the line when I was sculpting the face into expressions.

I was absent from this week class and didn’t manage to get time to run through the class tutorial, however I did watch it whilst modelling my own character.

I started to finalise my ideas. I really liked the sketches I had done of moths so I focused on using that idea and tried a few different styles.

I drew out the pose I wanted my character to have and added colours so I had a fair idea to the colour palette I wanted to use when the time came to texture.

Class Sculpt Workshop

Character Design

Research

I grew up watching a lot of the animations Genndy designed and never really thought about the message he was trying to portray in each character he did. He likes to break the normal with designs and prefers to use sharp, blocking character designs with disproportional body anatomy. I gathered some images on a whimsical board to look into his style more, and he consistently uses either large blocky figures or thin sharp figures when designing his characters. Just by looking at stills of his characters we can gather their personality or role within the show they are from, I think that this is a fantastic trait to have as an artist as it is an extremely challenging thing to do. It’s easy to read a character within an animation but to be able to view a still image and be able to read the character takes some amount of skill!

I also watched a YouTube interview Genndy had done, in which he goes through his work and speaks about his influence and mindset in its creation.

Sketches

This week I focused on looking into creatures and references and sketching out some ideas of what I wanted to model.

This week we were given the freedom of creating a helmet and texturing it. As an avid Star Wars fan, I chose to do Boba Fett’s helmet. The design itself wasn’t too technical but I still did face a few difficulties, especially when UV map prepping for texturing and I had to go back in and make more seams a few times to successfully texture in Substance.

When using Substance Painter I wasn’t too sure about how to add a translucent effect onto the plastic visor, but as it was a separate object to the main helmet I decided that I would be able to apply this through blender once the textures were imported into Blender.

After getting the textures into Blender I proceeded to experiment with different lighting and angles for a render shot. The first image above is taken with a high “sun” light and a small red area light placed inside the helmet facing down to illuminate beneath.

This was my final render where I placed a low “sun” lighting to still allow the details to show and the place another red area light in front of the helmet it give a slight glow on the edges.

In class this week we learnt how to texture by using Substance painter. I had a little knowledge of this software as we did use it in College, however I most definitely needed to go back to basics and learn it again as I had forgotten a lot of controls etc for it.

I chose to base my sword design off the Moonlight sword from Elden ring.

I had a bit of difficulty with the handle and getting it to UV map correctly. So I had to go back and simplify it down a bit more as I had caused myself issues with it becoming too technical.

I kept my render very simple and dark, but added a subtle spot light below to light up the handle. Due to me adding the emission onto the blade it didn’t need to much extra lighting added as this was the main feature of the sword.

This week was certainly a challenge but I enjoyed the modelling process. The hardest part was modelling the straw and the bevelled bend.

The second tutorial was a flower and vase. This one I thought would be harder than it was and I didn’t find I struggled at all with this. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m starting to get the hang of Blender or if I just found it an easier exercise.

For the homework we were tasked with modelling and animating Zubat from Pokémon. I didn’t find this workshop too hard until I came to texture it and then I started to face some hurdles but I was able to rectify these after messing around with Blender for a while.

Link To Animation: