Character WIP : guess who... oh alright, malcom from firefly

ultramedia · Post by **ultramedia** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 2:22 am

Hey all,

Spent a couple of hours last night working on this character that I've been meaning to do for a while now. There's a long way to go of course, but I like to be a bit of a tease and see if there's enough of it for someone to guess who it is...

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 9:17 am

Gil Gerard.

ultramedia · Post by **ultramedia** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 10:42 am

lol - that's funny. That's not who it's *supposed* to be, but now that you've pointed him out, it *does* look more like him than the guy I was trying to make

I'll drop a hint though.

Shiny.

ultramedia · Post by **ultramedia** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 6:20 am

alright then - it's only fun if people feel like playing - it's supposed to be Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Joss Whedons Firefly...

As I develop the texture and the hair, it should become a lot more obvious, but it probably won't be until I put some facial animation on it that his face will really start to ring a bell - I think much of Malcolm Reynolds character owes itself to the hilarious facial expressions that Nathan Fillion injects into the character.

One of the reasons I'm working on him fwiw is that I've developed a character modelling technique/strategy and now I'm ready to try it under a bit of load.

torleif · Post by **torleif** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 10:31 am

tbh I couldn't tell who it was

keep up the good work

arras · Post by **arras** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 6:09 pm

I don't know Malcolm Reynolds but your model is pretty good. Nice work. What modeling software did you use?

ultramedia · Post by **ultramedia** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 11:54 pm

This model is done in max, but the workflow I've developed for character creation is based on simple polygon modelling so you can use it in most any 3D program. (I prefer to use Blender). I've got the whole workflow recorded in video tutes too, for the max class I teach at uni. Unfortunately they were all recorded in an academic license of max and I don't have a commercial license so I can't do anything with them (other than use them for my class).

I toyed with the idea of re recording all of them in Blender and selling them from a website I made for that (www.showmethatagain.com). But these days there are already so many good modelling tutes out there that people are giving away for free that I'm not sure if there's that much of a market left for them anymore. And I know its selfish, but it took hundreds of hours of back breaking work to develop the technique and then document it in video tutes, I'm just not ready to give it all away for free (yet?).

One nice feature of the workflow though is that it's very flexible. This pic above is not a customized extended version of the technique, its the same mesh I use for any character. This is a huge advantage because it means you only have to rig and unwrap the character once, then you can make as many characters as you like from it by just adding morph shapes. Once I get the terraformer module of the Eden engine sorted out, then I'll be looking at adding an 'adam and eve' module that does exactly that.

xDan · Post by **xDan** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 4:55 pm

Cool

The side views seem more obviously recognisable as him than the front... not sure why