Investigation Blogpost: Week 1 - Process Photos

 This Week's Work:

Wednesday & Friday (10/13 and 15):

On both days, I worked on the head for my King model. I had already gotten some done prior to the week so I continued from there. I developed the nose and mouth portions of the face.

Thursday (10/14): 

I forgot my flash drive at home so I worked on reference sheets for the supporting cast of animation.

I worked on this character and created a rough idea of what the reference sheet will look like. I'm going to digitize it to make it cleaner like I did with the King's sheet (shown below).

Saturday & Sunday (10/16-17):

Over the weekend, as I was working on the head model mentioned previously, I realized my topography was at a point of no return. It was not suitable for rigging/animation. On top of that, I realized the tutorial I was following was for modeling and not exactly modeling for animation. So, everything I'd been working on was rendered useless. I started from scratch, following a video tutorial by a YouTuber called Dikko (link here -> warning for language). 

Using his tutorial, I started over.

First, I created the chest. Starting with a cube, I mirrored it and then slowly shaped it into the general shape of my reference image. I extruded it until I created the whole torso, including a crotch. I added extra edge loops for shaping and posing (as in, it will help with poses later). It went by quickly and relatively easy which is good considering I have to make up for lost time.

I created my arms separately and then joined them to the body to make a T-Pose. Making the arms was easy but attaching them to the body created the first real set of problems for me. My topography got wonky and stretched in places that ruined some of my loops.

Then, I did the legs and feet. The legs were easy. I later went back to add some edge loops that helped me to shape the legs to look closer to my reference. The feet gave me a lot of trouble! First, they started out way too small (and admittedly, they're still on the smaller side). When I tried to reshape them, it basically fell apart on me. It took a lot of time to make the topography look okay while also making them look like feet. I had to redo the entire bottoms of the feet because it just got that distorted while I was shaping. Eventually, I got to a shape I was satisfied with. When I model the shoes, I'll be able to make up for the unevenness of the foot. 

After all of that, I touched up the shoulders (not seen here) and modeled the buttocks. The butt will help with the fluidity of the walk cycle and other animations later on!

Next week, I want to finish the character model, including the head. I watched through most of the tutorial so I have a good idea on how long it will take me. Once I finish the model, it'll be easy for me to reshape it into the other characters so I do not have to start from scratch with each design.

If I finish all of that within the week, I'll begin working on the clothes for everyone. Then the rigging. Then the world. Then texturing... So on and so forth.