Investigation Blogpost: Week 3 - Experimentation

This Week's Work:

 Monday (10/25):

Continuing from my weekend work, I added eyebrows to my now fully sculpted head. I also added pupils to the eye. Then I started working on retopologizing my head. I started with creating base loops around the eyes and mouth to ensure smooth animation.

 Tuesday (10/26):

I finished the areas around the eye quickly enough. The nose caused some trouble because of its abstract shape compared to the model in the video. I had to go at it alone, but after some trial and error (and a lot of edge loops), I made it look just like my original sculpt!

Wednesday (10/27): 

I began developing the back of the head. I created a giant loop that travels the entire circumference of the head and then connected it to the eyes I worked on. I left a gap for the ears to go. Then I worked on the mouth which was also pretty simple: I just moved the verts into the shape of my reference's mouth and then I added some extra edge loops to add dimension.

Thursday & Friday (10/29): 

I finished doing the back of the head. It took a long amount of time because there were so many faces that I had to keep adjusting and readjusting to keep it simple and effective. Working on it lead me into Friday. Once I finished, I added the ears and a mouth bag which will help when I animate the character's mouth to open and close. I joined the head with the rest of the body, fixed up the mesh a little bit, and voila!

~

Experimentation: Hair

So, this is my first time modeling hair and I was unsure on how to go through with it. I looked up a few tutorials that all offered something different. I worked through some of it to see what was right for me.

My first reference was, of course, Dikko. I've been following his tutorial for this whole journey after all! However, he really breezes by the hair. I was really intimidated by the bezier curves and got lost quite quickly. He said it should be self-explanatory, but it wasn't for me, so I looked elsewhere.

The next two videos have a very similar method:

These two videos taught me how to create hair using the sculpting tools. I liked the idea at first because I am more comfortable with sculpting than I am with using curves. However, my plan fell apart almost immediately! The first step is to shape the base of the hair using the grab tool. My grab tool just would not work correctly. I toyed around with a few settings but thought it better to look for another tutorial. Also, I watched the videos the whole way through and I wasn't too satisfied with the results. That is, I didn't want that look for my film. 

This final tutorial is a return to bezier curves but this YouTuber explained it simply enough for me to understand it. To explain this method, you merge a bezier curve and a bezier circle. So, when you edit the circle, it edits the basic shape of the curve. Then you can edit the curve to impact the object's density. I tested it a little bit to see how it works. It will take a little more experimentation from me but this method is working the best for me. It also makes it super easy to get the curves that are required for my model's hair.