Character Development (Alex Winrow)

Anticipation – This is a motion or action that prepares the audience for a bigger, more significant action. A good example would be someone swinging their arm back before they punch someone.
Secondary Action – This is an action that emphasizes another action, such as the hair of a runner following in the direction they’re running.
Exaggeration – This is a way to make animation look more interesting as a perfect imitation of reality can be boring. This can also be used to portray characters personalities easily, as many caricature’s demonstrate.
Curved Motion – Most human (and animal) actions don’t happen in straight lines but rather a curved arc. Animators will use this knowledge to make their animation look more realistic by keeping the movement arced. However, some things do move in straight lines most notably motorized objects.
Follow Through – This is when various moving parts of an object will continue to move even when the object has stopped.
Staging – This is used to direct the audience’s attention to that which is most important to the scene. This can be done in a variety of ways, although the most common way is to change the angle and position of the camera. A good example would be the camera zooming in on a rope being cut by a sharp stone as our hero tries to climb up it.

Here you can see how I started work on the head, using a cube as a base. I started to add features such as a nose and eyes by extruding and inner extruding certain polygons and moving certain points.


I placed a hypernurb onto the head model to give it a smoother, rounder look. I haven't worked on the mouth because my character wears a helmet that will hide the bottom half of his face.


Here is the frame I am using for the body. It is made up of a few boxes, each divided into several segments. The arms will be extruded out of the torso later on.


Now you can start to see all the parts coming together. I made the helmet using an "oil tank" shape and removed any polygons that you wouldn't be able to see ie. most of the head.


I have added more detail, mostly in the legs where you can see several pieces of his armour. I have also began modelling a hand.

Only thing I would say is the middle looks bit to blocky but apart from that its awesome the eyes are very good

Interesting to start with a cube for the head but it seems to have turned out well enough.
As jack said the detail on the eye sockets is very well done and you might want to look into adding detail to the chest as it does look cubish. The hand you have done doesn't look like it matches the arm as well, look into getting them together.
Other than that, awesome!

I really like his helmet but like the others feel his chest is a little under detailed in comparison.

I suppose that could be fixed in texture though with some crazy fool logos or something. Continue.

Helmet is awesome, I'd say the hands don't really fit in well with the rest of the model, and maybe work on the middle a bit more, still looks like just a cube. Hawt though.

declan is right helment is awesome maybe some info on how you did that would improve this.

The helmet is awesome well done, i like the eyes and the chest piece aswell, maybe just add a little more detail to finish it off

My Character is some futuristic bro in a fancy smancy robotic armour suit thingy. He's cooler than you are, and there's nowt you can do about it.


Here are a couple of sketches I did for possible poses for my character. The top one is a guy crossing his arms. The second is a guy showing his crotch. Which is better? You guys can give me feedback.


Here is the initial sketch for my character. I haven't gone into much detail, I just drew a general idea of what my character would look like.


I drew the front and side profile of the helmet so that I would have a better idea of how to model it when I got to that stage of the project. You can also see a doodle of my character nearer the top....but ignore that.


This is another sketch of my character, going into more detail. I used this as my main reference when modelling the character.

And those are my sketches.

So modelling, right guys? I started off with the head, and here's how I went about it.


First I started with this here box, split into segments. I then made it editable, ready for the next step.


I used the knife tool to split my cube straight down the middle. I then selected half of the polygons, ready to delete them.


I deleted all those polygons which is pretty rad. BUT! There are all these points left floating about, and those are totally NOT rad. So what you do is you select all of the points (yes, ALL the points) and Optimize them. All the points that don't have a job/aren't connected to anything will just fade away. And now we can carry on.


Now we throw our cube (or half a cube, I guess) inside of a symmetry. This will create a mirror image of the object placed inside the symmetry. This is pretty rad because it means whatever we do on one half of the face (trust me, it's a face) will instantly be recreated on the other side of the face!


Here I'm selecting a few polygons, these particular polygons will be the mouth. Once you've got em all highlighted/orange/ready you inner extrude them. Now I'm inner extruding it by 10 meters, which is ridiculous because nobody's mouth is 10 meters wide, but you could extrude it by any ammount you want, really we just want the new points, polygons and sides it makes.


See all the nice new polygons and the like? That's what we wanted.


Then all you gotta do is do the same sort of thing in the eye area. You could even inner extrude several times for the eye since it's such a delicate, expressive part of the body.


We've got enough points now so I'm just going to move them about so it looks more like a face....


Like this. It's still a bit blocky, though. Not that big of an issue considering my character's going to be wearing a helmet for his entire life, but it still don't look right.


Ahh, there you go. I just moved my symmetry/cube object into a Hypernurb. That smooths off all the sharp edges by adding a few/lots more polygons and points.

Well there you go! The head of my character is done and dusted.

Here's how I made the torso for my character.


I started by making a cube. I changed the Y segments to 2 so that I had more polygons and points to work with. I then made it editable and started moving the points around.


Here you can see what the torso is looking like from both the front and the side after I've moved the points about. It still looks a little basic.


I've imported this picture into the back of my viewport to help me model. Now I can move points around so that they are a more realistic shape. I used the knife tool to add the extra polygons you can see here. I could cut it several more times so that I have a smoother model but I want to try and keep my poly count reasonably low, and since my character has a robotic sort of body it doesn't have to be very smooth and curved.


And here's how it looks in the end! Pretty simple stuff, but it works. I might come back to this to add more detail.

Looking good so far, everything's in proportion and your head is really good.
No negative comments to make so far but I'm sure I'll find something with more images :p

You couldn't very well have a walking animation without some legs. Here's how I made mine.


I created 2 cubes, each divided into segments (3x3x3). I then resized them slightly so I could differentiate between the upper leg and the lower leg.


I used an orthographic picture of a man in the back of my viewport to help me resize the cubes that make up the leg.


All I needed to do next was to make the cubes editable and start moving the points about, try and get them a bit rounder y'know?


Something like this! Well, they're certainly rounder here, but they're not as shapely as most legs.


I moved into the side view to move some more points around, making the legs more leg shaped.


And just like that, they're done! A little lacking in detail, but that can be done later.

My character has a pretty cool helmet. But how did I make it? Well here's how.


I started off by creating this here oil tank. Though, it's not very helmet shaped.


Messing around with the object properties give us this, which (believe me) is more helmet shaped.


I deleted the polygons on the bottom, since I wanted a straight edge and the end of the helmet. I also moved the lower ring of polygons down so as to make the helmet longer.


Now, to make the hole for the eyes (I like to call it the "eye hole") I just selected the polygons that made it up and extruded them. Here's the interesting bit, I extruded them to a minus value so that they moved IN rather than OUT. I apologise if you actually thought I was going to say something interesting.


Then I just deleted those polygons I had selected to make the "eye hole". Great stuff, no?


And there's the finished thing. The details were all done via extruding certain polygons. Pretty simple stuff, but the end product looks pretty good.

My character needed some arms, so I made them. Here's how.


First things first, extrude out of the torso. Then a little more, for the elbow. And then another big extude for the rest of the arm. That's how I got the general arm shape. They're a bit pointy though.


To give 'em that rounder, armier, shape I had to cut down the arms first with the knife tool to make some new polygons. I was listening to MCR at the time.


Then I just moved the points around to achieve a rounder shape. That's all there is to it, really.

Feet are also pretty important in that whole "walking" mlarky.


Like the legs before them, the foot started off as a cube divided into segments.


I made the cube editable and started moving some of the polygons and such about. Here I've elongated it a bit, so it's a bit more like a foot. Of course, my character is wearing shoes/boots of some sort and so I don't have to go into too much detail here. No toes or anything.


Here's what it ended up looking like. If you think it looks strange that's just because my character is wearing funky, futurisic, cyberatic, lunatronic, space boots.

This is looking really good so far, haven't got much negativity to say about it, might want to put some more detail on the body parts.

I like Declan, but I figured my character could do with a crotch-like area unlike his. So, let's get the ball rolling.


This is a familiar sight. A cube split into segments. The reason I do this is so that I don't add too many polygons into my model making it some high poly tosh.


After moving some of the points around it's looking more and more like a crotch than you'd ever of thought.


Of course, it's not just the crotch I'm trying to shape, I also need to get dat buttocks. I'm using the picture in the back of my viewport to help me shape it.


And there you have it. I rounded it off at the top as well, for extra comfort.

Here are some before/after shots for some of the fancy extras my character gets on his lunatronic armour.


Sausage legs are so yesterday


Fancy leg armour is the future


He looks pretty cool but he's missing something.....


Ridiculous sized shoulder pads! OF COURSE!

What do you guys think? Anything else I should add? Come on, have your people call my people and we'll arrange a lunch.

I thought I'd post a render so that you all know how I'm getting along. The only note I want to make is that this is not how it's going to be textured when I hand it in, these textures were quickly thrown on it so that you have a better idea of what's what and stuff.



Feedback time. Come on, don't be shy. Compare it and contrast it with my initialy sketches, see what's going on.

Wow, that looks really similar to the initial sketch, just what you wanted to make I see, try and put some detail on the model now, it looks a bit plain.

Other than that it is awesome!

I think maybe what you need to add is a third arm, and make his legs a bit bigger. Cause like, with bigger legs, he could totally crush boulders and attract some sexy womens!

But no in all seriousness, your model is awesome. I can't wait to see the walk cycle!
Definatly the best one I've seen so far.
Also the second one I've seen so far.

Wow your character is coming along very well. it has got some good shape such as the helmet. would like to see some more detail

I can't wait to see the fully UV'd character, model wise I think waist could use some detail.

I love this one, drawings are quality and the model looks awesome, the armour is boss!