Bear Grylls
Second person I'm going to draw some inspiration from is the late Steve Irwin Purely for his energy and charisma which has a child like feel to it which is perfect for my 9 year old boy with hyperactive tendencies. Whilst I'm not going to use him for the look i think it will defiantly help with coming up with poses for my character.
The late, great Steve Irwin doing something crazy
The near indestructible Nathan Drake
These three will be my base for my character and will take said element from each to hopefully create a well rounded and believable character.
Initial Designs
from the inspiration i have collected i have made 8 different designs for what my character could look like and i will put it up too my peers to help decide what one i go for and to put in feed back.
design 1 and 2
since the child is a hyperactive child is ant the look to be sporty and athletic but at the same time slightly more rugged since he is into bugs and insects he would be spending quite some time crawling round on his hands and knees looking for all manner or creatures. i like the idea of the character carrying a bug net as a way of catching those fast insects so i'll keep that throughout the design stages.
next i thought i'd trying adding some accessories to give the character a bit of a mercenary look so stuff like satchel bags and unnecessary belts to add to that look which gives him a more adult look but this also could be a problem if he stops looking like a 10 year boy so the character shape will have to be changed to compensate for this.
from the designs so far i then tried to go a bit more detailed and also a bit less detailed. first of i tred simplifying the design just so i knew i had covered or possible idea and while i rather like the style of the character it just wasn't what i was going for in the design. second was more on the right track and was starting to look like the sort of character i was going for and like the idea of a tie rapped round the head for the child playing rambo look.
the final 2 ideas are what came about from all my ideas before hand and made into two different styles. the first was the more child like of the two and made to look quite rugged and dirty with the double belts as if he's borrowed his dad after watching to many action movies. the second design was a more over the top idea i had making him look like a child mercenary with water pistol and all the accessories any budding bug hunter might need though i feel the design is too complex to do what with rucksack binoculars making it a lot harder to model.
Final Design
After show my peers my design, it was number 7 that people felt suited and fitted my ideas and the brief best so i cleaned it up and made him a much more rounded character that will hopefully work well in 3D when i start modeling.
from my final design i have created my front and side views for using when rendering
Front view
Side view
Beginning model
i struggled with the modeling throughout as i found it a very frustrating task and it took me about 3 attempts to create a model base i was pleased with and was workable. the hardest part for me was modeling the clothes on the model as it meant creating basic shapes which i would have to shape into clothes which i had a hard time visualizing in the early stages but i carried on through an i did start to see results i was happy with.
once i had the basic shape i was able to move onto the hands and feet, the feet i found relatively easy and didn't have any problems with though the hands were for me the hardest thing to do and i could never get them right and i believe this was down to my character design not being detailed enough and i think when i come to doing another i would do maybe a top down view to help with the hands as i really struggled with them an never got them how i wanted.
Thanks to some great tutorials that i got from a peer i found the modeling of the head rather easy to do once i watched a few and i got very lucky with the head shape as it met up with the neck rather nicely saving me a lot of hassle near the end of the deadline though i did have to be quite carful when doing the bandana and hair as i just extended from the model as i felt it would be too time consuming at the time to learn how to create realistic looking hair and a cloth bandana.
this was my final model before smoothing and overall i was pleased with my out come as i know myself that i am not a modeler and i don't enjoy modeling though i understand how important it is to know these skills and i have learnt a great deal through the course of modeling the character, mostly through trail and error but its helped me find ways in which i feel most comfortable in modeling.
this was my character when smoothed and i was really pleased with the out come of it though i was never able to texture him as i encountered problems when unwrapping which i wasn't able to resolve in time. this will now be a personal goal of mine to lean how to unwrap models properly so that i can create uv textures in photoshop, an area which i am much more capable.
i also managed to start rigging my model though this was also met with problems as then moving the arms the head would be warped. this has lead me to set my second personal goal which will be to learn how to paint waits so i will be fully able to rig my characters with out the aid of others.
here is the printed out model after putting the maya file into netfabb.
