Megan Bednarz

I decided to model a character that I made up a long time ago. She is a sort of dragon character, but her wings are feathered, and she has a gem on her forehead. Here I have blocked out the basic geometry, starting with a cube and extruding until all the parts were there. I have used mirror cut to duplicate the geometry on the other side. It will be interesting when I try to texture… I want some of the things (the wings, for instance) to be partially transparent so I can put feathered texture on them. That means I will have to use a PNG with alpha channel for the texture map. I modeled Trillin because her basic geometry is pretty blocky in the first place, so the texture should apply fairly well to a low poly model.

Well, Mental Ray didn’t like it when I tried to assign different materials to the same object, so I’m going to have to actually texture the model if I want to render with Mental Ray. This is my render with Maya Software, the same basic lighting (i.e. not 3 point, and not awesome). Suggestions? Should I go through the trouble of rendering with Mental Ray = texturing? I could possibly just do Ambient Occlusion magic on this and have it better lit. Please comment!! Please!! Don’t make me wait until class time for feedback!

I decided to make my heavy character more happy than mean. What do you think? Notice I made the head smaller and modeled the feet. I fixed his fingers where he’s holding onto the little flag. He’s still kind of barely holding it, but I think that makes it more obvious that it’s a tiny flag compared to him.

I have set the character in his pose. He still needs some refinement — he has no toes yet, and his fingers are not finished. He also needs eyes. But that’s it for now!

I did some research. Here are some source images for my character!

A political cartoon… but I don’t want my char to be that mean-looking.

Henery Hawk — from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. He’s tiny, but built in the “heavy” style.

Here’s a good musculature reference I found:

Klubba is definitely a heavy character. He is from Donkey Kong Country 2.

Here I have posed his left arm and refined the head and arms a bit more. I think I will pose his right arm to be holding a USA flag… of course he will be a bald eagle! Also, I think I shall have to make his head smaller, to be the true archetypal heavy character.

Here I have refined the beak, head and musculature a bit more. Still haven’t touched the hands or feet. I am using shiny materials and two light sources to catch any anomalies in the surface as they occur. The biceps still look a bit strange here.

Here I converted it to a sub-d model and have started refining.

You can see here the edges.

Okay so here’s the REAL final product. I decided to add a glow to the mysterious green chemical, at Garrett’s suggestion. Igor noticed a small bit of the shadow on the left side of the image which was distracting, so I moved the light around to remove that. Thus I had to add a bit more hair to the back of his very-bald head, because that part of the shadow was revealed! He also pointed out that the shirt color was very cool-toned, so I touched it up with some warmer green color to make the scene slightly less cold. And now it matches the green chemical more too!

Thanks everyone for your wonderful comments! This project would not be as good without them.

What do you think!!? I softened the shadows and gave him a nose (people kept giving me comments that he didn’t look human). I also added some ambient occluzamashon. Blah! I am going to play with the glowy greenness now, but otherwise, this will be my final product!!