Final Model & Turntable

For my finishing touches, I ended up increasing the resolution of much of the model, so that it was much smoother and could convey the kind of texture I wanted for Charity. Most of the changes after I smoothed out the now-higher resolution mesh were to the hair and the dress of my character, making the leaves stand out more and have more volume, so that they mook like they are layered over more than previously. There was also some minor mesh correction, fixing holes that the Dynamesh had made when recalculating the bottom of the dress.

I am very pleased with the final model, and she captures many of the ideas and hopes I had for her when I began concepting.

Further Development and Work in Progress

Further developing my character, I began work on her dress, deciding to go with my previous idea of having a dress made out of plants and leaves. I wanted the dress to look alive and flourishing, to act as a counterbalance to the lifeless, dead-looking arms of Charity. To do this, at the top of the dress, I decided to give her some boughs of grapes, which are modelled as part of her dress, but appear to be growing from her shoulders. 

I also worked on her hair, again wanting to make it look more alive than the rest of her body, as though her arms, which are usually depicted as the instrument by which charity is given, (helping someone up, giving away food, money, clothes, lending a hand, etc.) are her sacrifice through charity.

Modelling WIP

Some work in progress shots from this afternoon's work. Today's work was mostly working on the branches, removing some of the symmetry that they had, as well as transposing her arms so that she was in the T-position, ready for submission. 

After modelling the body for my character, and finding it more difficult than expected, I decided that my original concept of creating her clothes to look like landfill or deforestation would be too difficult for me to model at my current skill level. Instead of this, I have decided to represent my character's sacrifice through charity by removing her hands, replacing them with something akin to the stump of a tree. Additionally, instead of basing her design around incorporating landfill, pollution, etc, I instead have decided to leave the branches on her arms barren and without fruit or leaves, replacing the idea of deforestation with that of death and their inability to provide further charity because of that - making the representation of sacrifice more obvious. 

Environment Drawing Sessions

In Lothar's first session, we went to the Castle Museum to study the clothes there, specifically the form of them, the folds of the fabric, and their texture. 

The first piece was particularly difficult because of the lightness and transparency of the fabric, however with the second, the fabric appeared similar to suede, and so I decided to try a different shading style, using more blocks of shading to capture the texture of the fabric. I like how it turned out, however the harshness of the darkest parts somewhat drowns out the mid tones, and so more conservative use of darker shades would have been useful.

For the second session, we returned to the Castle Museum, this time focusing on drawing larger scenes, capturing the architecture of the keep. Here, I tried a slightly different version of the shading that I used for my second piece from the previous session, whilst making the midtones of the scene more prominent.

Life Drawing Sessions

For Will's first life drawing session of the term, we focused on clothing and facial expression, spending a few minutes on each sketch. For the faces, Will explained that the shape and angle of the face wasn't important, and that it was better to focus on the features and contours of the model's face to capture her emotions accurately. 

For the body sketches, aside from the obvious anatomy study, we were also told to pay attention to our mark making and blending, to highlight the difference in texture between the model's top, skirt, and skin.

For the last part of the session, we drew used mid-tone paper, and black and white chalk, to capture the shadows and highlights of the model and her clothes. I like how this piece turned out, particularly the folds in her clothes, however I think that the highlights on her cardigan are too strong, making the fabric look like a more reflective material.

In our second session, we focused on hands and perspective and, as before, spent only a few minutes on each sketch. An important aspect of the hands that Will highlighted was the importance of capturing the contours of each part of each finger, and also the proportion of the palm to the fingers.

 For the perspective drawings, the model held a wooden box in various positions, and we were tasked with drawing the box initially, then drawing the model in scale to the box.

For the final part of the session, we began by drawing a chair, paying very close attention to the proportions of it, so that when we drew the model in three different poses around the chair, we could use the chair as reference for the model's proportions, fitting him into the scene.

Continued Modelling Ideas

Here, I continues modelling some ideas to continue making my representation of Charity more interesting. The second and third models ended up looking more like raised tattoos instead of actual body features, but they could be used in the modelling process, perhaps in places where my previous idea of having fruit grow from her skin is unsuitable.

Charity Modelling Tests

Moving on from my silhouettes, I decided to model some ideas for various aspects of my charity character.

Here, I modelled two dress concepts, playing with the idea of either having her dress be made of mostly leaves, vines, and the like, or more of a solid piece, from which I can build more detail such as fruits, leaves, etc. into. From these models, I was drawn more to my first idea of clothes made of plants, and so I decided to look into the possibility of building the more solid aspects of her character into her body, in particular her shoulders, which I plan to leave open.

I particularly liked my initial idea of morphing her skin into branches, to make her appear less human and more of an embodiment of nature's charity. My final idea here could also be of use, to give her skin more texture, and to reinforce the idea that she is the epitome of growth and nature's provision.

Charity Silhouettes Continued

After talking to Nigel, he recommended that I do more silhouettes and get a wider range of ideas before moving onto my model. Following from that, I did another page with some different ideas.

I'm still drawn to the idea of my character wearing a dress or clothes made of plants, fruit, berries, etc, but after this I feel like I want to include a more extreme design, perhaps giving her deer-like features, or incorporating the spirit of charity into her skin or hair to make her more original.

zBrush Practice & zSphere Creations

In our first and second workshops with Mark, we got into the basics of modelling, starting with a sphere and using the Clay Buildup, Move and Smooth tools , as well as Dynamesh, to make simple models. 

 Then, in our third workshop, Mark taught us about zSpheres, and how we could use them to quickly concept ideas for characters, before tasking us with creating 5 characters using zSpheres.