Feet or no feet?

I was thinking the other night, do I need to give my character feet? This came into my head because I was watching the childrens program 'Pocoyo'. Yeah, i know, I'm a big kid...

There is an elephant in it, called Elly, and it has no hands or feet. I want to keep the hands because as the gorilla is very civilised, hands would be kind of helpful for this, and mine is a butler so he definatly needs hands, well it would be more practical for him to have them anyway. But the feet aren't so important to my design. I want to keep it simple too. Heres a few images of Elly to see how the legs look with no feet on the end of them...

Couple of changes to my character...

So I was thinking about how the mesh looks and I wanted to clean it up in places. I've also changed the arms because they just weren't looking right. I tweaked the body and chest too, so it dips in and up, and I've changed the legs a tad too. The eye brows are more like my concept drawings now too.

Feet!

Here is how the feet are coming along...

Hands

Staring on the hand now, just trying to get the basic shape. I think I'm going to do more of mittens than hands, as doing individual fingers will increase the poly count because i am limited to 100,000 and i wanted to save most of the poly count for putting detail into the face in Zbrush. Here are a few images to show what hands i want to produce.

These images of the famous Tony Hart character, Morph, are perfect for how I want to model my hands. Not only will these keep the poly count down, they are easier to do because I'm not an experienced modeler and also Morph and Chaz are made from plasticine, which is the affect we have to create for our characters.

I'll keep all the fingers as one, and do a separate thumb so there is at least some definition for the hands, but i want to keep it simple, to go with my overall style for my character.

This is where I'm at, at the moment in Maya as far as the hands are concerned.

Upper part of Cornelius done!

Now I've got the head and body mirrored and stitched together, ready for Zbrush! I'm currently working on the hands and then I'll move onto the legs and feet which shouldn't take me too long to model. But here it is so far.

Getting there with the head!

I've now got a basic head shape ready for mirroring and stitching together.

London Zoo!

Today i went to London Zoo to grab some photos and more information about Gorillas. They have just had a baby Gorilla born, but unfortunately because it is only 2 weeks old, I couldn't get any good photos of it because his mother was holding it and feeding it!

My Ticket!

Map of the park

I took loads of photos of their faces, hands, heads and feet to try and get a closer look at how to model my Gorilla. Here's a few of my photos...

There were some models of them too, so I took photos of them from the sides and front, which will help me in Maya for modeling the head...

Head

These are a few sketches I've done of how i want the head to look. I've taken the basic shape from the photographs i found on the internet and then adapted it to make it slightly more 'cartoony'... I don't like using that phrase but still, this is what I have come up with!

 

 Now for Maya! Here is how the head is coming along. I've got the basic shape down now and I'm pleased with it so far. Now I just have to work into it more to get the mouth, eyes and nose looking okay.

Personality Ideas

I've been thinking a lot more about how to get my Gorilla to be different from any other gorilla, without being obvious and stereotypical. I like the idea of waiter or butler gorilla. I got his idea whilst researching 'sensible' roles a few posts below. I could give him a bow tie, tux and a tray or something. These are just ideas being thrown around still, nothing set in stone yet but I'll have to take this into account whilst I'm modeling the rest of him. These are a few images I've found from animals as waiters/butlers. My favorites are from Madagascar 2, with the posh English chimps.

Torso and arms!

So here is the torso and arms so far. I'm happy with how it is going at the moment, although I may change the arms slightly because they don't look right... But I'll see where I'm at when I'm done modeling.

Front:

Back:

Curve Networks

I was told about curve networks for a friend, and decided to research into this as it's an alternative way to model. I wanted to see if it would be easier for me as I am on a time limit for this term. I found various tutorials online, but this was the most helpful and in depth one I could find:




Its basically drawing round a reference image from the front and side view in Maya and then inserting polygons to the curves you make when you draw around the images. Most examples of this were done with cars and buildings and objects, not organic material. I thought it would get too confusing to do this way, because you do each section independently, so the arms, head, body, legs, hands, feet etc.

I think I'll just stick to normal polygon modeling with extruding and all that jazz, as this is the safest way for me as I'm a beginner still!

Originality

I've almost finished one half of my gorilla torso now, and have been thinking about how I can make it unique and original from all the others in my class. I thought back to when i read the brief and the synopsis of Cornelius the gorilla. It said he is the most sensible and civilised occupant of the zoo by far. I was trying to think of a few roles that you need to be sensible and wise for, as to be good at it. He are a few ideas...

Chef:

Waiter:

Surgeon:

Fireman:

Policeman:

Doctor:

Security Guard:

Straight into maya!

Because I haven't modeled much before, well only a coke bottle, a basic low poly human and a lamp post - I figured I'd get into Maya asap! I took my first sketch into Maya and set it up on a plain and off I went...

I'm pretty happy with how its coming along so far. This took me about 2 hours (yes i know I'm slow) but at least I'm getting there! I did this from a polygon cube and just extruded faces, inserted edge loops and moved vertex's about. I'm quite liking modeling too, which i never thought I'd say!