DMUGA Week 10 - Project not going so well...

I finally addressed the face issue this week and I can safely say it is a relief to finally have it more or less figured out. In other news, I think I may have found a big problem with the way I've been going through life drawing on Tuesdays...
Furthermore, I know we have been given until next week to complete this project, and I aimed to get it done for this Thursday, but after Monday I really wasn't sure if I should present this week or not - I originally planned to have more done by this point in the project. Also, things are starting to go a bit wrong as I'm losing focus on the outcome and I'm no longer happy with the characters I've made... *Sigh*

The issue of the face was dealt with on Monday where I thought "Just do it, gather some reference and just draw". The morning wasn't a great success as there was a lot of wasted time with Photoshop being very slow (Might be my file size - but it's only about 300MB!). Here's the face that came to mind for this character:

I was rather happy with how the face turned out in the quick drawing, I now just needed to start modelling it... right after I fix the proportions of her body which now look so badly wrong with the addition of an actual face.

On Tuesday, I received some feedback from Chris on the proportions of the girl and how they do not fit anatomically to real life. We therefore looked at Andrew Loomis's proportion diagram to see how much needed to be fixed for it to look right. It turns out that it isn't close at all to the proportions of a normal 3-5 year old. Now, this is supposed to be stylised, so proportions can be exaggerated in order to create a desired effect - What better character to use as reference than 'Boo' from 'Monsters Inc'?

In addition to the feedback on the girl, the textures for the robot were referred to as "not ringing true", and I therefore made 3 other texture sheets for the robot based on the suggestions made, just to see if any of the others work more than the one I've already got. Even though they were quick modifications, it was just to see if a slightly different combo worked better or not.

Lightmap

I also began modelling the girls face on Tuesday, of which I finished on Wednesday and it turned out alright, but it still looks just so wrong:

Life drawing this week was so much fun, I actually ended up with a drawing at the end where I wasn't disappointed to show it. This kind of happened last week as well when I used a donkey instead of an easel. This tiny change from standing up to sitting down drastically affected how I worked and I felt a lot more comfortable doing so.

In the future, I am going to try and use a donkey (if available) when doing life drawing because I have noticed quite a rather big different in my work when I am sitting down compared to when I'm standing up.

Wednesday was a bit of a weird day because I didn't know when I'd be presenting until halfway through the day, so I therefore spent the afternoon/evening deciding on what to put into the presentation/making slides for it, and not getting much further in the project itself. However, the morning was spent unwrapping the rest of the first character 'Blue', and putting on a base texture just to see what he'd look like... This is what I'm talking about when I titled this blog "Project not going so well...", alongside my thoughts after the feedback on Thursday.

Thursday was presenting time and I have to admit I am getting a little bit less nervous each time I present which is a good plus. However, here's the feedback:

-My robot character anatomically doesn't make sense not to include some sort of hands
-Eliminate the spine on the robot
-Sort the proportions out on the girl (Which I thought were OK)

I just feel like I've tried to please everyone when make my choices for this project, and now I've ended up with 2 characters I don't really like. I think I would have much more enjoyed this second half of the project if someone else gave me their designs to model and I made/rigged them.
Obviously, I'm going to act upon their feedback because that's what you do, I don't think it'll make much difference to their overall opinion though, so it's almost like faffing around with little details when I may have just made a whole new character instead.

The rest of Thursday was spent changing the girls face a little bit, making a LOD of the robot in 5K tris, and modelling the scarf/unwrapping the majority of the girl again.

Last but not least, Friday was spent beginning to make the modifications on the robot and the girl's ears.

Already from this screenshot of the head, I definitely need to change the shape of the head itself (Side view looks wrong), and make the ear a little bit bigger.

In summary, not a too productive week and I'm just looking forward to what the next project is because I know that I'll do so much better on it already. Heads up though, next week is the last week before Christmas and I'll wrap this project up, then unwrap some presents very soon - my favourite time of the year because it's the easiest 'unwrapping' I've done all year long!