Character Creation

Torso

To start off the creation of my villain I have decided to follow the same method as when I created the basic character. First create a box and allocate each section with segments, then convert it to an editable poly. Next extrude out a place for the arms and neck by selecting the necessary polygons.

Next using the cut tool, add some more lines around the body. Select vertex mode and move the vertices around where the back of the villain will be to create a hunch. Move the vertices inwards a little at the side of the body to create the waist of the villain.

After pulling out some of the vertices around the shoulders, push some of the vertices inwards around the lower back to show off the hunch. Select the vertices at the bottom and pull them up a little to create the pelvis, then extrude out the polygons where the legs will go. Extrude out the neck a little more and the select the line at the back of the neck. Move this line up to tilt the neck forwards slightly to aid the hunched look. Use the scale tool on the polygon extruded from the top of the neck to make the polygon a little smaller. Add a turbo Smooth effect to see what the current torso of the villain looks like.

Arms and legs

The arms and legs are very simple to create. First select polygon mode and select both faces on the arms, scale them down a little to make them more round. With both faces still selected extrude them out a little to form the bicep of the arm. Select the bevel tool to create the elbow, then move back to the extrude tool to create the forearm.

Once the arms are long enough move down and select the polygons on the legs. Extrude the legs out a little to create the thighs and then switch to the bevel tool to create the kneecap.  Move back to the extrude tool for the remainder of the leg. Change the colour of the character to a more skin like colour.

Turn off the turbo smooth so that the edges can be seen more clearly and select the lines where the elbows are. Move them out a little so that when it is turbo smoothed again it will create a bump on the elbow. This can then be applied to the kneecaps as well.

Clothing

Apply the turbo smooth again and clone it. Scale the clone making it a little bigger and delete most of the polygons on the arms and legs. Move the lines around a little so that the bigger shape completely covers the smaller one so that it looks like the body is now wearing a vest.

Next move the vertices of the vest around so that it is just covering the body of the character and delete the polygon around where the neck is. Next extrude the head out from the body shape to form a long narrow head and extrude out the lower polygon from the head to create a chin. Select the lines and move them around to separate the chin and the head out a little more, making them much easier to distinguish.

Once again turn turbo smooth off and cut a new set of vertices straight down the middle of the vest. Click on the vertices and use the chamfer tool to split the vertices creating a small square and work the way down the vest doing this for all of the vertices in the centre. Assign an ID number to both the vest and the buttons and add appropriate materials to it using the material editor. Once done turbo smooth it again.

Back positioning

Once I got the basic body shape for my villain I then moved on to fine tuning a few details, starting with the back. Though I got the hunch the way I wanted the top of the shoulders seemed to stick out too much making them look rather large. First select the body shape and select the vertices and just move each of them back to make the back a little more rounded off, rather than pointy. Do the same for the shirt so that the shirt just covers the body.

Hand

First use the cut tool to break up the segment into a few multiple segments. Extrude each of these segments in turn switching to the bevel tool to round off the end of the fingers. Use the cut tool again to cut up a segment on the side of the hand and extrude the thumb. Move the vertices around a little to make the thumb more rounded.

Hook Hand

While modelling the hand I thought it would be a good idea to have the other hand as a hook to make the villain a little more threatening. Simply extrude out the segment a little then use the scale tool to scale down the size of the segment being extruded. Switch to the bevel tool to round of the end of the hook, and then move the vertices around until the hook is curved.

Attaching clothing to body

Attaching the clothing to the body using the attach tool will make the whole object the same colour. Select each individual bit of the body, such as arms, legs and head and assign an ID number to it. Do the same for the hook, feet and shirt and then choose the different colours for the different attributes.

Eyes, Nose and Mouth

For the eyes I followed the simple tutorial as previously shown. I then moved the points around on each eye and scaled them to fit the face. I decided upon making the eyes look a little different to add to the ugly side of the villain’s personality. I also cut the segment where the eyes are located into two, then bevelled them both in a little to create an eye socket of a sorts.

The nose was also fairly simple. First cut out a triangle in the segment underneath the eyes and then extrude the newly cut segment. Next move the vertices making the nose narrower on the top and a little narrower on the bottom.

For the mouth I used the connect tool on the segment underneath the nose creating a new segment a little way apart from the nose. I then used the inset tool to create an outer line around the new segment and the used the extrude tool to push the segment in a little. I then created a box and used the connect tool to create multiple lines down the box. I then used the inset tool to give each small box an outer edge and then assigned new ID numbers for both the larger and smaller faces. The larger faces I then gave a white colouring and the smaller one a black colour. I then placed this box in the space I created for the mouth and then moved the vertices around on the head to hide parts of the teeth.

Hat

Next I decided to give the villain a hat, by first cutting a cylinder in half and extruding out a few of the faces a little. I then used the soft selection tool to pull about some of the vertices making the hat look a little worn in places.

Clothing

I decided to keep the short sleeves in tack for the shirt, for the legs I selected the lines from trousers and used the loop tool to select all of the lines around the leg. I then used the shift copy method to move down the trousers down the leg.

I decided to then go back and work on the mouth as it didn’t look quite right. I deleted all of the segments on the face around the mouth area and used the shift copy method to create a new blank one. I used the connect tool to break the bigger segment up into smaller ones so they can be more easily moved. I extruded the middle ones inwards a little and moved the outer ones around a little. I used the bend modifier on the teeth I created earlier so that the teeth became more rounded and fit comfortably in the slot in the mouth. I then moved the vertices around so that parts of the teeth were covered by the lip area and also so you can see some of the teeth when viewing the villain from the side.

Design Changes

I decided to make a few changes while in the modelling process. I decided to add a hook to one of his hands opposed to fingers to make him a little more evil looking. It also opens up the possibilities for his back story into how he lost part of his hand.

Intial Designs

Below are some drawings detailing what I think my Villain may look like once the modelling process has started: Each drawing contains labels to point out more obscure information that is hard to obtain from the drawing itself.

Basic Character Tutorial

I have created a basic person before, but it was a rather rushed and simple attempt. To start create a box and assign a number of segments to the different regions and convert the box to an editable poly. Next highlight the top left and top right vertices and pull those outwards a little to create the shoulder blades. Move down and select the bottom left and right vertices and pull them upwards a little to create the pelvis.

Next switch to the polygon selection mode and select the polygon to extrude the arms and the legs. Switch between the extrude tool and the bevel tool to create bumpy looking arms and legs which should make them look a little more real. This will help making the biceps and triceps look bigger than the forearm and the quadriceps bigger than the rest of the leg.

Next use the bevel tool to extrude the neck out a little and then bevel it open to create a space for the head. Bevel it round to round off the head once it looks big enough for the body.

Adding bones to the person is also quite a simple method. Simply add bones to the person you created starting off with the spine and working the way through the body. Make sure that all of the bones are contained within the mesh of the person then select the skin modifier. This will attach the mesh to the bones. If the skin modifier doesn’t work apply the physique modifier and use the envelope option to even out the mesh to the bones.

Tutorial Cartoon Eyes

Creating a cartoon eye turned out to be much simpler than I first thought. To start create a sphere and under the parameter rollout move the hemisphere up a little to form the pupil of the eye. Clone the sphere and increase the radius slightly and take the hemisphere up a little more to form the eyelid. Clone the upper eyelid and rotate the sphere round to form the lower eyelid.

In the material editor chose a standard material – multi sub object and set the number to two. Make one material black and the other white to form the colour of the pupils and the cornea then drag this new material to the first sphere.

In the create panel choose space warps – geometric/deformable FFD box. Click and drag the FFD box around the eye and set number of points to two. Go to bind which is located on the toolbar next to link/unlink which will allow you to select points on the eye which can be moved around.

Reaction to Brief

Upon reading the brief my first thought was excitement about creating a 3D villain aimed at children aged 7-11. I have already created a basic 3D character in the past, but not one that will require a sufficient amount of detail to show off the villain profile. I also started thinking about the techniques that I would need to use and found myself coming up with a few questions. Such as how would I do cartoon style eyes and what sort of new tools would I be using? When using 3DS Max I love finding new tools to use because there are just so many different ones that are suitable for different purposes.

Immediately I started thinking of ideas that would be suitable for the age range for children, checking that they were appropriate. At first I was thinking of something alien based but decided against it after a short while due to finding it hard to come up with a basic villain profile for it. In the end I decided on an evil janitor who works in the police station. My next task is to start coming up with a background for this evil character and also researching villains from films and cartoons so that I can start design and storyboarding.

Villian Research

Below is a mood board showing a handful of villains, including a mixture of cartoon and feature film villains:

all of these villains have a few similarity's whether they are trying to take over the world or just want revenge on someone.
Firstly the eyes, they are usually either wide open and crazy looking giving the impression that the villain is completely insane, or the eyes are slits giving the impression that they are intelligent and calculating. Sometimes there is a mix between the two types, at one particular moment they could experience a particularly over the top crazy session which shows just how mental they can be. at another moment they could narrow their eyes, thinking and calculating their next move, making them just as dangerous. Both these types have there own advantages, the wide-eyed crazy villain doesn't think of the consequences of their actions, preferring to lash out as hard and fast as they can showing no limit to what they will do. The calculating villain spends more time thinking about their moves and how to cause maximum chaos while trying to avoid the attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySGod3QKEIc

Jafar, Disney villain from Aladdin, is more the narrowed-eyed calculating villain, constantly thinking and planning but also experiencing a few moments were he looks wide-eyed and crazy. The eyebrows are also rather high on the head and are at an obvious angle when looking head on moving diagonally as the eyebrow moves from the nose out towards the top of the eye. this really brings out an evil side when the eyes are narrowed as the eyebrows look very threatening almost like wings from a bird of prey. He is quite tall making him tower over others as though he is some sort of god with long boney fingers making him almost skeleton like. And then there is the colour scheme which is mostly made up of black and red, emphasising darkness, danger, anger and evil.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv-VlJnDvuw&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Hades, villain from Hercules, is much more of a crazy villain than a patient and calculating one. the narrowed eyes appear more when angry rather than calculating the next move. Like Jafar he has a long thin face, almost inhuman, with long boney fingers giving a skeleton look. He has yellow eyes and pointed teeth making him look rather grotesque. He is completely obsessed with power and doesn't care how he goes about getting it. He has a blue flame for hair which also gives off a much colder side to the villain, showing he has no conscience for his actions, but the flame turns orange when he gets angry to show the more angry and inflamed side he has. He wears a black robe which can indicate death, darkness and evil. as he moves he glides along the floor with black wisps of flame moving around his feet and also likes waving his arms around as though trying to explain something to someone and becoming impatient that they are still not getting it.