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The first thing we do is design what we want. It can take days to get a design juuuuust right, or it can be totally inspired and perfect in a moment. But either way, you have to put your pencil to paper and DRAW it!
The next stage is to properly draw it out with a side profile and front profile that match perfectly. The head, chest, legs, nose, etc, should all be the same size and shape in both drawings. This is very important because these are the drawings we take into the 3D programs to model off of.
Once these reference drawings are completed, we scan them into the computer where we can use them for reference inside the software. We put these images onto planes, and rotoscope off them - basically so we can trace off them while we model.
After this, you can start to build your character! There are many ways to build a head, such as scupting a single cube (by adding and moving extra lines and points of the geometry), or by making several different pieces (such as the eyes, mouth, nose, etc) and sticking them all together afterwards.
Yeah! We've created a head! We have a take care to make sure the flow of the lines that make up the head travel smoothly around the face, so that when we make the character have expressions and talk later, it will move smoothly.
Next we make the body, which I normally make from a cube....
I start with a cube (we just press a button to create a new one). Then I add in all the nessesary lines that will allow the leg to keep a round shape, instead of looking like, well, a stretched out box. Then I can streach out the shape and add in extra lines where needed, to sculpt the shape of the leg.
Notice how the leg I have built matches the image? Thats how important the drawings are!
Thats basically how you build the rest of the body... Maya has a wide range of tools to use to help you move and edit points and edges, so you can make whatever you want! After your model is completed, the next step is to give it some colour and more detail... called Texturing!
More coming soon!
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