Characters

Modeling Characters

As i decided that i would like to make modeling my main job on the film. I had the task of creating the characters.

See Modeling Folder For finished Models.

Initially i was only meant to be making the Prospector, but due to the circumstances I ended up having to do a Dog and a Bird aswell.

However, i started with the Character. I had not really done much character modeling before but was keen to have a go, and fairly confident that i could do a good job.

The character was designed by Josh Brittain. He started with sketches of the character, and then made a model sheet for me to use as reference.

This is the concept art for the character.

















Here is the model sheet i used as reference when modeling. Ive found in the past that having a front and side view can really help when it comes to modeling. The more reference the better.















As i have had issues before i decided to start with the head as i knew this could be tricky. Getting the look right was tough, i had a few issues with the topology of the model whilst putting in the detail.

The topology on the left was causing a pinching around the bottom of the chin, when the head was mirrored, To fix this i had to basically rework the topology around the whole head. This was the first time i had really looked into topology and stated to understand how to make it work.

I had to research other head models and see how certain bits were done, in particular the side of the head and the chin.

It was only by looking at examples such as this that i was able to fix my models topology. I found topology to be like a puzzle. BUt once the basics are understood its fairly straight forward to apply to pretty much any area of the model.

Getting the loops to flow well was very important. Leaving no three sided polygons.

 Once i had sorted the topology i had to give the guy some ears. These proved slightly tricky due to the odd shape, I had to make sure i was sticking to the reference as the ears are quite a prominent feature, especially in the concept work, but i feel like i captured them well in the end. I did have to change them quite a few times before i could get them looking th same as in the drawings.

The beard was something that i struggled with badly. I really didn't know where to start with it. I had initially thought about using a hair sytem, but rendering would have been a major issue. In the end i decided to start by creating the main shape. for this i just used baic shapes.

However in the drawings the beard is very spikey and has a unique style to it.

I managed to final get something which was vaguely right by extruding the faces and making them into spikes. The only issue with this is that it would not be able to be animated, which was slightly disappointing. a hair system would have been dynamic and would have been affected by movement which would have made it so much nicer.


There was no other real issues with the character in terms of getting it to look right. However When it came to rigging the character i found that the way i had done things was awkward and was causing problems.

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I had made the characters body and had planned to model the clothes separately and add them on.

It looked fine, but when rigging it was proving a nightmare as the body would come through the clothes when moving the joints.

The clothes here just had basic colours applied to get a feel for what he may look like when finished.


Here the trousers, shirt, boots and hat are all separate pieces.




To fix the issue of the body coming through, i had to delete the body that was underneath and attache the head and neck straight to the shirt. I had o do the same with the trousers, these now connected straight to the shoes and shirt.




After i had done that i was able to pose the rig and no longer have the issue of skin poking through the clothes.




Im reasonably happy with how the prospector turned out. My main issue is the level of detail on the model. I know the drawings are fairly simple but it would have been nice to be able to add things like muscle definition. I had attempted to look into Zbrush to achieve this but quickly found myself out of my depth with the software. In future if i was to attempt models like this one i would definitely look at learning zbrush. and utilize that rather than using hard surface modeling like i have here.

For the cartoony look of this film, the character does definitely work. So i can be happy with my efforts for now.


The issues i had with the prospector were a good way of learning to model characters properly, Topology especially. I was able to then go on and model a dog and a bird. Neither of which took very long to do. Even though very different in shape. The models all share the same techniques of having clean topology.

The topology seen here is very similar to that seen in the head of the human,

Once i had done it once i found it very simple to go through and make sure it was all ok. Its surprising how simple is can be once you understand how something works.

I had really struggled in the past with the concept of topology but now, im confident in my ability to make clean models.











This dog model is probably the model i am most proud of from this project. Although very simple in design i am happy with how it looks. Especially the way it fits with the style of the film.

I would have liked to add to fur to him and maybe will at some point. But for the film , much like the beard for the prospector having fur would have meant huge render times. whcih were just not realistic in terms of getting the film finished by the deadline.


When modeling the Bird i kept everything very simple, much like the other two characters i started with the eye and worked my way out, This time however it was a lot easier as the birds is basically spherical. So there was no real detail to be made.



The only bits that took any time was the beak and feet.In the original drawings there were no feet, however i decided it would be nice to have them there. I didn't want to be left having to hid him when it came to the final film. By having feet there i wasn't going to be restricted later on. THe beak however was definitely necessary and was tricky but once i decided to model it separately i was fine. Initially i had decided to do it as one piece. This did not work though as there wasn't enough edge loops to put much detail in. I didn't want to add ridiculous amount of loops to compensate for this either as that would have lead to a messy model. and could have quickly ruined the simplistic look.

Placing the beak correctly gives the impression that the model is all one piece. Although very simple i am very happy with the result, the only bit i'm not 100 % happy with is the wings. However because the bird doesn't have much scene time and doesn't move much it would have been unnecessary and therefore inefficient to spend much time on them. If i was going to make this again to even add to it later on, i would probably look into a way of creating feathers, that is the main thing my model lacks. This would help the wings look better too.