Scrap it, sculpt again!

This last week has been slightly more constructive than the week before. After looking at my old clay model, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't that happy with it and wanted to start over. I still kept the drawings in mind as they weren't too bad, but something was lost in the 3D process. So here we are again, a nice new concept sketch!

The hair has been simplified for 3D, as well as bringing out the eyes a little, ultimately making the character a little less Keith-ish. Following this,  I started out with a new clay head, perched on a biro.

There's a lot more definition in the face now, such as a stronger brow and a thinner jawline/cheekbones. I'm pretty happy with this, much more than last time. Note the blu-tack piercings... they're not actually going to be on the final model as the character will be linked to closely to mysef, and although this character is going to be a characature of myself, I'd rather it has some sort of difference to act like a stock rig over a direct copy of my face.

Here is the skeleton, made primarily from foil and some pretty thin wire for gardening. That wire had to be twisted on itself a good number of times (8 or 16, I forget) for it to be strong enough to hold the sheer amount of plasticine that would be wrapped round it. However, this frame is still a bit shaky, and when the weight of plasticine is put on, you are essentially fighting gravity over actually creating an ideal design. The foil cuts down on weight, but not enough for you to have an ideal amount of control over your model. To combat this, it's best to have the feet literally pinned down to a base so they can't actually move from the ground. As a pretty shoddy, yet effective, base, I found a bit of skirting board with 2 screws already tapped into it. Fortunately these screws were an ideal space away from each other for each foot without affecting the pose. So the model's feet have about an inch of screw tapped into them to prevent it toppling over. It could still happen like anything, but that worry had been averted.

After a good few hours and the Resident Evil trilogy (nom, Milla Jovovich), the model has been built up, with the head attached to the top of the wire skeleton and smoothed seamlessly. Hands are not that detailed here, as they are so damn tricky to model in Maya, they are a project on their own; I'll leave them clenched here as there's no point trying to make them to scale right now. I have also added fuller cheeks to the head after bringing it together with the body, as they looked a bit flat. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this direction and have fewer doubts about the design than before. This has been used to create front and side orthographic drawings to proportion, and are being used in Maya as we speak. Hopefully, a good model will be viewable next week, as well as a spot of rigging, which I'll try and cover over a few bonus posts, as I know rigging is everybody's enemy and I'd like to share my personal tips to get round the awkward phases. I'll leave you all with an extra picture of the Mikey sculpt, surrounded by the bombsite that is my desk.

Pretty long post today to make up for last week's embarressment. Peace Out!!!