Character and Narrative: Modelling Skills

I have very much enjoyed my studio session today. To start off we were shown how to use the tools we were going to need when it came to making our models, for instance Insert Loop Tool and Extrude being two main ones. I already knew how these tools worked vaguely, but it was nice to see other ways in which they could be used, and how they were going to be applied to our model. 

Next we were thrown in at the deep end and instructed to make a replica of the practice model that we had previously positioned in different poses. Well, I say "in the deep end", but really we were given a series of video tutorials on how to sculpt each part of the body and at a first glance the task seemed to me like it was going to be next to impossible, but once I had got the hang of how to use the tools in this context, I found myself sailing through the videos and with minimal problems (surprisingly enough).

 

 Torso and Shoulder

 The first problem I encountered when sculpting the torso and shoulder was that when I tred to use the "Append To Polygon" tool to close up part of the shoulder, it wasn't working how the tutorial had made me expect it to. This is because I had accidently made some faces that were 0px wide by activating the Extrude tool, and immediately clicking off it without undoing the extrude. This was preventing me from making a whole, smooth surface. However, I now know that by activiating the extrude tool I am still creating faces, despite whether I edit the face value or not, so I now know to undo this before I continue. 

The only other problem I encountered was that some of the entruded faces I created were facing the wrong way, which again prevented me from joining up the shape using the "Append to Polygon" tool. It wasn't something I noticed right away as I didnt realise the faces would actually do that, and it's only when I asked for Matt's help with my problem that he pointed it out to me and how I could fix it. The solution was actually really simple; I just have to select the face, then Normals and Reverse. This turns the face the correct way and also enables to me to connect vertices together. 

Added Arm and Leg 

 Added Foot, Head and Mouth

I found the rest of the modelling relatively straight forward with the help from the tutorials as it was simply using the same tools to make different shapes. The only thing I really had a problem with was distinguishing which edge/vertex was which in the front view, that and determining where I should place the vertex at the top of the head, but even that wasn't a massive hinderance. In the end I just went for it and reshaped the head afterwards in perspective view. 

All in all it has been a great session for me today. All that is left is to sculpt the hand once the tutorial on it has been uploaded, then I shall be able to mirror what I have made to make the model whole. 

Bring it on.