Week 20

The character project continues and we now delve into the 3d stage of the character. Modelling the person and then breathe life into them via rigging. Admittedly this is something that I have been very worried about if not dreading to get into. As I am quite the perfectionist so I am bound to put off new challenges out of fear of failure. This was quite evident this week as in the beginning of the week I promised myself I would work on modelling  a base mesh for my character my goal was to get this done by the end of Monday. Long story short I didn’t. I didn’t even start until about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Instead I put it off and directed my attention to working on my 2d art and produce a final concept for my character.

Although I'm quite happy with the outcome of this concept I am not happy with my work ethic. It was clear that I was using this so called final concept as a way of procrastinating; doing something I’m quite comfortable to feel as if I am doing something productive when in fact I’m spending hours on something which shouldn’t take me as long and I’m doing it for the sole reason of putting of something I’m scared to do.

In terms of the overall proportions of the final concept things seem to be alright, the model should be roughly 7.5 heads tall and the proportions in relation to each other should be quite solid as I was constantly iterating the pose and getting outsiders to view anything that was funny about the concept. My only problems with the render is that the right arm appears to look quite flat from the way I have rendered the arm. I should have really pushed the curvature of the form similar to how I did with the left arm. Moreover what needs to be fixed would be the colour palette. From what I have learnt from my colour mood board, to effectively convey a warm colour palette I have seen that some artists balance a warm and cold palette with the use of subtle cold palettes to push the warm colours towards our eyes. I feel that the colours vie used in this concept are too desaturated and don’t meet with the style guide of a warm feeling.

 Hence to resolve this issue I added more blue accents in my concept and added a few oranges so that the contrast between the two will push the orange towards viewer’s eyes and really convey a warmer tone. 

Finished head for model, middle base mesh, left old base mesh

When I did get to the modelling of my 3D model quite surprisingly I found it somewhat enjoyable; modelling the base mesh. 3D has always been something I have struggled with but the duration of the course has given me skills in which now when faced with a problem of 3D I can somewhat find a solution without throwing a temper tantrum.

I believe it took me the rest of the day to model a base mesh however I wasn't happy with the result especially the topology of the form so as a result I reiterated and modeled a new one. I felt that my old model would have problems deforming when rigging so as a result I looked up limb topology edge flows and attempted to reflect that in my work. Looking back at my workflow compared to how I worked when I started the course I truly have become comfortable modelling within reason. So much so I worked on both my orthos and my base mesh dual screen listening to the citizen cane of bad movies, The Room. It truly was an enjoyable experience however I hope by doing so it doesn't take away from the quality of my final model. We will see in the coming weeks.

Finally this week in critical studies we were tasked to print out our progress in both our blogs and character project. I felt that this task was very useful as it got me to understand what I was doing well but most importantly what I was doing wrong.

Blog

-grammar problems

Visual design

-work less loose; things are too noisy

Moreover I also received a point of reference to understand the point of register I should apply to my blog. Before coming onto the course I was familiar with writing blog posts however they were very formal and essay based. This has always been something I have struggled with when writing posts handling a formal attitude without conveying a robotic sense of writing to my work. During this critical studies I was given a strong idea as to how I should go about constructing my posts and in the near future I hope to push my writing towards said format.