The life of a cowboy - Part 2

I began the modeling process from the drawings I made in the post below, lining out the face topology and extrusions.  Using 3D Studio Max as my primary modeling software, I polygon modeled the face in quads, and built the rest from the neck down.

I tried not to make the cowboy too high poly so as not to create slowdown on our school computers.  Of course though to get good bends along the joints of the anatomy (such as the elbows, knees) more edge loops and polygons are required.

The clothing was also very fun and simple to do.  I felt the character already coming to life.

I did the texture phase just afterwards, right now you see the base mesh colors from the software, but the model is complete (and with his awesome beard!)

After the texture phase, I brought the file into another 3D software called Maya.  Because I was more comfortable at the time with animating and rigging in Maya I opted to finish my film using that software.  I went on to create the Blendshapes for the face.

I created just enough facial expressions to emote what the cowboy would be feeling in a short amount of screen time.  It didn't take too long, and I had fun with it still.

Ahh, rigging. It's a love/hate relationship I have.  Do I enjoy it? The base of it, very much so.  But with skinning and ensuring proper joint orientations, it was probably the most time consuming portion of my cowboy's creation.  I built the rig from scratch though, so atleast if anyone asks I can say I did indeed do it.  Moving the controllers and seeing nothing explode brought me so much relief!  I was definitely a happy man when it was done

Now... on to animation!

The life of a cowboy

When creating my main character for my film I opted to choose a style and direction I wasn't known for. I wanted to keep it a cartoon, but not super exaggerated. At the time of brainstorming, I was heavily inspired by the video game "Red Dead Redemption", and so I came to create a western setting. In conceptualizing my cowboy, I looked up celebrities, actors, video game characters, etc.

Eventually I came across a couple of images and started sketching faces.

 I was debating on whether he should be thick or thin, tall or small, old or young, heck I was even thinking of creating 2 cowboys having some sort of standoff (However, no guns were allowed) but in the end it didn't take long before I drew the cowboy I wanted.

I came incredibly close to making his hair white/gray, you know.. make him old and legendary. But in building his personality I thought making him a bit younger would've been more convincing.

Next post will be the 3D Building foundation of the Cowboy! Oh, and here are my reference images I found using Google Images to help inspire my cowboy.



Hulk Hogan and Red Harlow 

 

Exercises

Here are some exercise animations, done in late 2011.

Enjoy!

The early stuff

Here are some works I did when conceptualizing what kind of character I wanted to include in my short film.

I started off with a sort of man/bird hybrid (or "harpie" as they're called).  I eventually came to realize though that the story was too long and too complicated to produce in a 2 minute film.  It was an ambitious idea in my head that had too much backstory; maybe one day I'll use it for another film in the future.

I wanted to keep it simple, but it ended up being something that would have been too hard to handle while in school.

Hey readers!

Just testing out the blogspot format and layout settings. Works will be posted soon!