Reflective Journal: Week 10

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I'm working at a pretty good pace. I should be able to finish this basic head within the week and hopefully I'll have time to reshape it by the end of the week as well.

The base head is done. It's not perfect but it doesn't need to be since I'll just adjust it from here to fit the character design.

I adjusted the nose to be pointed down and larger, and squared out his jawline.

Oana has given me some pointers on adjusting the face using the soft selection and sculpting tools. This has been useful in making big changes to the form without disrupting the overall topology and while keeping things relatively smooth. She also noted that I should add an extra edge loop at the tip of the nose to keep its form sharp.

Here's the head with the adjustments made largely using the soft selection tool. It's looking a lot more like the character now. I mostly configured the mouth and squared the jaw out, pulling the cheeks out as well. I also stretched the head out a bit, vertically, pulling the bottom half down.

I think I'll leave the head shape alone for now (lie - I ended up adjusting his eyes to be smilier) although I will need to adjust the neck slightly to have it fit with the body. I've somehow ended up with 20 sides on the neck which is far too many to connect with the body and doesn't follow the 8 sides rule. 

The teeth are quite basic in shape - just cubes that have been reshaped and beveled. To add more detail, I would insert more edge loops and round them out a lot more, following reference to get the shapes accurate. Being conscious of time restraints and the overall simplicity of the original character design style, I'll keep it simple like this. In terms of anatomical accuracy, his teeth are quite large and they should curve inwards more. If this were a model that had to be rigged and animated, I would definitely alter it to be more accurate as a lot of expressions would probably require a more realistically proportioned set of teeth. But as a still model, the prominent teeth are fine and match the 2D artists' vision well (and puts a bit less weight on us modelling the inside of the mouth and gums as they'll barely be seen). 

Similarly, we likely won't put much detail into the ears when we get to them.

I've started on the hair, including the eyebrows and moustache. The top of the character's hair is covered by his hat in the turnaround and isn't otherwise specified. I'm giving him a slicked back hairstyle with a widow's peak. I think this suits his sleazy vibe and the receding hairline gives him more of a reason to cover it up.

I think his hairline could recede a little more actually.

Note to self: I still need to add tear ducts - I keep forgetting.

Antonio is on pace to finish his parts of the vehicle before the end of this week. He had some issues with some objects in his scene disappearing. I didn't think to tell the group about incremental saving before which I realise now could have saved a lot of trouble with this. He ended up just remaking the objects that he'd lost and finished his parts early in the week. I've tasked him with modelling the clothes next. I've realised that the neck of the body will likely need to be adjusted when attaching the head, and so I've let Antonio know about this and he'll save the clothes around the neck for last to save us the trouble of needing to resize and adjust them later.

Jasper is moving at an okay pace and might be able to finish his parts of the vehicle by the end of the week. He's having some trouble with modelling the rifle part. This is a little more complicated in that it has quite a lot of unique curves. If he is able to finish this, I've tasked him with modelling the ear next.

I would like to have all or most parts modelled by the end of next week or earlier. Then we can spend the rest of our time connecting our pieces and laying things out.