Week 3

Character design

Renard, star of the Statetown Circus!

I decided to create a slightly different character from 'Prince Charming' as i thought this had been used a lot. i wanted a character who would have the same charisma and features. the first thing that came to mind was a celebrity, and i then decided on a gymnast character as the body shape fit this role. i used features from research in week 2, for example the large jaw and posing. i added a curled moustache to show the characters European heritage in a stereotypical way. this type of moustache also fits in with the stereotype of old gymnasts and body builders, making a recognisable character for the young audience.

Above: an 'old fashioned' weightlifter.

One pose i drew above shows 'Renard' standing tall and looking very proud. this was to show his pride in his work, and his love for impressing his fans.

this second set of poses show some more actions, including swinging and landing from a jump. these are the sort of actions the character would be doing.

the next step was to draw the character up in neat from the front and side. the images were drawn on squared paper to ensure they lined up and proportions were stuck to.

the character was drawn in a neutral pose to help with the rigging process.

Modelling

after setting up the scene like in the week 1 hand reference, the modelling was started.

plane modelling was chosen as the best method for creating the mesh, as it gives the most flexibility.

a good place to start modelling is around the eyes, so a plane was placed beneath the eye and extruded out and around multiple times. a symmetry modifier is added to the plane and the mirror placed at the centre of the reference image, so that only one half needs to be modelled. the mesh also welds at the mirror, or seam, which helps join the two halves.

the eyes in the image above are actually flipped the wrong way round the z axis. this was fixed later on.

the next step was to create the mouth, using the same method as the eyes. when the mouth was completed, it was attached to the eyes using the attach button in the edit geometry roll-out. this turns the two objects into one object.

the first image shows the setup in the 4 view ports.

once the mouth was completed the jaw could modelled, by extruding down all the edges along the bottom of the mouth. at the bottom of the chin the edges were rotated to create the curved surface.

the mouth and eyes were the joined together by using the bridge and weld buttons. bridge creates a face between two or more selected edges, and weld joins two vertices into one. these are both useful tools for connecting, but weld is better for keeping the polygon count lower.