Week 4 | Pulling Things Together

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 Pulling Things Together ≽^•⩊•^≼ ₊˚⊹♡

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This week was spent going over my model, finishing the hair and 'sealing' up her hair, and redoing a turn around so I could keep things proportional. I basically wanted to prep so I could spent this week and reading week learning uv-wrapping and beginning to find ways to turn this model into a physical object.

I think UV wrapping (which is like painting the surface of the model) BEFORE I print it out or use different colored papers to get what I want will save me lots of time and help the model look more tidy. So I really wanted to have the basis of my character done! 

Here's what I started with last week:

It was quite flat when I revisited it, and not at the exaggerated proportions I had in mind. The hip portion were also bothering me a lot, because they didn't look like hips and interrupted the whole models shape by being blocky.

But! First I focused on the hair mesh. Apparently this is the hardest part of 3D modelling...and I believe whoever said that. But something that helped me was finding references of other low poly models topology for their hair and sort of following the shapes there. It's a lot like sculpting - you start with a really broad shape then just keep adjusting and picking at it until it gives you the shapes you want. The only thing with hair is that you have to be careful of clipping.

Using tools like extrude, the knife tool, and the loop cut tool, I began to block out the general shape for the hair. I extruded little spikes, then flattened and manipulated them to get the look I wanted. I had my turn around in Blender, with a front and side view to directly compare my shapes too. The hair was done in a few layers: top, back, sides, and front.

I knew I couldn't get her hair exact - so I aimed for an approximate look. The goal was mostly to give her a bit of a spiky mullet.

Making the bangs was my favorite part, as they sort of pulled the whole look together.

Once the hair was (relatively) done, I went to tweak the body. The nice thing with working low poly is that its really easy to adjust vertices and faces, and you don't have to worry about things like sculpted details being affected.

I redid my character turn around so it was perfectly symmetrical, which would help me in 3D. I also changed the proportions of the upper body, pants, and feet, as I thought it would make the character more interesting to look at.

And oh yeah, I changed the hips too! I added a cut out in the middle, separating the legs. It fixed the blocky look I really wasn't liking. I really like how the pants are looking now too! They look less like crinkle fries.

And look! I managed to do the robot arm! It took some reference searching, and I found some 3D models of a similar shape online and looked at their topology. I started with a cylinder with 2 loop cuts, scaling the top and bottom to get that weird bean shape. The 2D design is sort of vague - but I made sense of it by raising a sections before adding the fingers to give it a tiered look. I might bevel or soften the edge of the palm, just to get rid of that harsh edge.

(I also scaled up the other hand for a little bit more balance design wise)

Final for This Week ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )

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I think I'm in pretty good shape this coming week. I just hope UV wrapping isn't too awful and painful. I heard there's lots of cool programs and even apps you can use for it- and of course Blender itself offers it. At this point, I'm onto small details.

I'll need to model her goggles, her backpack, and maybe model in some raised details on her. But it's small things. For the goggles, I may make them so that I'll print them separately from the main model and attach them after making them - just so it's less tedious when I move onto making this thing buildable. I'm very excited to give her some color and texture!

Reading week will be a great time to really focus on bringing her into the physical world. I'll have time to sit down and do some research and see how other people do it. I've seen some pretty complex paper models of characters on YouTube and Tik Tok, so it can be done.