Building Lee

Appologies for the generic pose of Lee- I haven't got a rigged version back yet :) The making of Lees face took two attempts. Apparently, constructing a face is one of the most complex objects to model according to people in the industry, and I defiantly agree. As the characters faces have a lot of screen time, obviously they must be well built. We followed this tutorial when building our characters, as it provides a method that includes good edge flow to your model, which is important for when a face is rigged, to avoid unwanted creasing etc.

My first attempt was dismal unfortunately, as I began cutting in too many lines to add detail to the nose, completely excluding the mouth area which I assumed I would fix later. However, I soon realised when I got to that part, that this would be impossible as there was just too much detail on the mesh. There was no way I was going to be beaten by my own character and so I proceeded to have a second go, making sure to adjust every vert of each new edge that I added. In fact, this advice can be used for any model built. It hadn’t taken long for me to see the original face was wrong, so I still managed to keep to my time schedule. Once the basic face was modelled out, adding detail was not a problem. You can’t fix something if the foundations are wrong.

I then went on to build Lee’s clothes. I started with the body warmer as I thought this would take the most time to construct. I wanted to make sure the puffs weren’t too puffy because as her body warmer is yellow I didn’t want the audience to think she was wearing a life jacket! The collar of the jacket took a while to look the way I wanted it to but it was just a case of adjusting the verts accordingly. I chose to include strips of material that would hide mostly where the zip line would normally be, as I have found on previous characters that making a zip line is a lot of hassle to get looking right, and when its on right people hardly notice, but if its wrong everyone notices. So the less zip on show the better! In the images above you can see that although I have modelled the zip handle, there is no zip line at all, as I am going to model that in the programme Mudbox. This software will allow me to add more detail to my model. In a previous project I had used Zbrush for this same reason but as Mudbox is made by the same company as those who create Maya the controls are very similer and so should in theory be easier than Zbrush. This is a link to some really clear tutorials for anyone interested in learning:

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/video_mudbox2009/sculpting01.asp

When Dan redesigned my character, the belt he included was to be made of ribbon. However as I was creating the belt, I felt that if Lee were real, the belt she’d be wearing would be made of plastic, with a shiny plastic bow, the type that I would think young, trendy girls would buy from Claire’s Accessories. I spoke to Dan about it and he didn’t mind me changing the design of the belt :)

I then made her top as I wanted to make sure that I had left enough space for her arm to come through the jacket.

The skirt.

The tights, like the face took two attempts as once again I added too much detail too soon, which made any errors I was making unfixable later on. My first attempt looked like a leg of lamb, was completely flat and so was unusable. My second attempt was a lot better I think.

With the body modelling done, my friend Charlie noticed that Lee didn’t have much of a figure, even for a child. I had been modelling the clothes so closely I had failed to notice that. Once again the lattice deformer saved the day, as I indented her waist a little and gave her more of a bum and curve to the back.

I also created some hair tests for Lee. As a group we had sat down and discussed how we wanted the hair to appear. We had all agreed that the Maya hair tool would be unsuitable for what we were looking for as it was far too realistic. As the modelling style of our characters was very chunky, we needed to find a way to incorporate that look within the hair. Dan R had an image of Poison Ivy and I had some images from the film Monster House, and it was decide to try and make hair that looked similer to these models. The only problem was how. I suggested Mudbox or Zbrush as we had used this before in a previous project but the only problem with this was that it might take too long to get the model to look how we wanted it to and maybe modelling it straight from polygons was easier? Myself, Jake and Dans all carried out tests in Maya, each with dismal results. Mine are shown below. I attempted multiple times, extruding a polygon along a curve. Out of the four of us, Dan C created something that at least covered a characters head, even though it looked like ribbons. It seems that in the end we will have to use Mudbox after all, although that is not our main priority at the moment. First, the environments have to be worked on further.

An example of Zbrushed hair, made on a previous project. Instead of such thin strokes, larger ones would be more appropriate for the look we want to achieve.

Once the characters were built we realised that there was another problem. Kitty. Although she had looked good on her own, next to Lee and Cho she just looked out of place. This wasn’t bad modelling from Jake or a bad character sheet from Dan. Kitty had just not converted well from image to model when next to Lee and Cho. As we didn’t specifically know why she wasn’t fitting in, we again spent a considerable amount of time huddled around a PC with the soft mod Maya tool attempting to squash her face into a more appropriate design. Dan C eventually took the model home and showed me two options. Image 1 or image 2. I chose image 1.