Eye Character
 

This is a project that was meant to have started last year early december

in my mind it's already complete... hence why i never did it

i been meaning to retexture the iris of my eye since i made it... and now i might actually do that

i'm trying to make me a new mascot...or logo... whichever comes first
i have one that already exists, but it was made about 5 years ago... with swift3D (very limited software) and photoshop
you can actually find it on google image search if you search 'reality sculptor'. it was on the first page last time i looked.

here were a whole lot of concept sketches...
http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...43_4391130.jpg
as you can see my drawing abilities are nowhere near as cool as THX1183's or Someguy's abilities.

nonetheless, i kinda settled for the little dude in the middle...

now for my horrible painting skills:
http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...42_6865813.jpg
the purple is a temp colour... it's not going to be purple, and i put a layer of transparent grey over the whole image because the eye really doesn't match it's clothing
i'm gonna have to redesign it's legs/feet and the arms will need to have hands of some form so it can hold it's sword
the colour scheme black-grey-yellow is meant to be black-grey-gold and i'm not sure whether i'll make the iris different to that or keep it the same
colour concepts will follow once the model is made...

now something a little less depressing than my drawing skills:
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...53_2712329.jpg
on the top left is the blocking out phase, it starts with NURBS. Infinite curves are awesome

on the middle top it changed to polys, and here i did what i seem to always do... draw stuff onto the mesh with split poly tool... i saw no other way of making the shape of the black surface
basically the whole point of drawing the edges to make the black part is so it stays round.

on the top right i coloured the parts that will be black a different material to make selecting those faces easier. now it was just a matter of rerouting the edges so that they were quads whilst keeping the round shape.
sure was a long and tough job...

the bottom two are just showing you the black part from another angle
it wasn't important that the grey part wasn't in quads... it was gonig to be deleted anyway

the hardest part so far:
http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...54_2037587.jpg
turning the back into quads...
on the right half is the originish-ish mesh derived from the NURBS
on the left is my fix.
i could probably stand to lose two edge rings and make some of them look more... round...

just for fun, here's a render:
http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...50_1065707.jpg
the green iris is temporary

Looking really good Chirone! I liked your eye avatar anyway but this guy's looking cool, looks like a lot of work rerouting all those edges. Is the outside part of him Armour, or is it actually part of him? I can really see him slowly blinking and turning around towards the camera.... Keep up the good work, can't wait to see it when you've done a bit more!

Also, I like the iris, so if you do change it I hope it turns out as good as that one did.

thanks Dango!
it was a lot of work... i thinki spent about 2-3 hours on it :eek: or maybe 4...
including the time i spent staring at the screen wondering how to make it quads...
the other challenge was trying to get all the quads to look similar size... which kinda never actually got enforced...

yeah, the black part is kinda like armour. the shoulder pads will be metal... that much i know...
the black part will be more like leather, so i'll need to find a suitable texture i guess

i'm also going to have to make the black part the eyelid, so he can blink and pull faces. i want to avoid having a mouth on there or it looks way too cartoony

the grey and gold parts i haven't actually decided... i have thought of doing the gold parts more thinner and more vien-like than shown in the concept picture

i'm thinking i'll actually have to use the smooth function on the black part too... i don't want to, but it looks like it's not going to smooth out very well with soft edges and bevels don't really do anything... although, they do have the ability to kill the materials on some faces and make them transparent... something that happened on my first model as well...

the iris is ok... but it's based on a brown iris, so it's really boring... i have pictures of blue iris's and they are more interesting to look at (although maybe considered disgusting by the average folk :p)

can't wait to get this done... i got a scene for him planned out already


i was meant to attach this picture before, but i forgot...
it was going to be exclusive to the forums but then the edit post doesn't have the option to attach a picture, so here it is for everyone to see

http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...600_560387.jpg
i used the ol' get-the-cylinder-primative-and-snap-verts-to-make-stuff-round trick again...
also killed one edge loop

That's my favourite trick, I use it all the time! :D

update.. i'd say i'm done with my character... well the base mesh anyway
i'm not happy with his shoes, and i haven't given him legs cuz they look funny
he has boxing glove-like hands, unlike the little stumps in the concept pic, cuz he needs to hold items
i was actually going to give him an index finger but looks like i forgot... woops.......

wire, showing the soft and hard edges because i couldn't be bothered turning that display off:
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...83_1353129.jpg

render1, floating eyeball with arms anyone?:
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...13_5123304.jpg

render2, different angle. ignore the shadows, they are just remnants of the unchanged project i am building this around... i just haven't got the textured plane attached to it, hence no square window-like reflection in the eye
http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...14_6515588.jpg

wire of a sword
it took so long to make the hilt because i didn't know how i was doing it.
the hilt was originally made from lofted curves based on motion trails, but in the end i just drew points with motion trails and drew edges onto a poly cylinder
the blade is made from loften some curves and converting to polys
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...80_6060032.jpg

rendered:
http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...74_1744785.jpg

i think you have been making this very difficult for yourself.

you're reason?
what would you do differently?

i wouldn't have it such high poly.

"the blade is made from lofting some curves and converting to polys"

why convert to polys? It seems like to me that you like "infinite curves" if you are not doing anything after converting to polys then why bother. you get UVs with the nurbs. I can understand converting the armour but you had a few isoparms in there, personally i would have converted 1 for 1.

"i just drew points with motion trails"

why motion trails btw?

the arms need work they look pretty shapeless, I think they are too thin.

Got to agree, it seems like your making it complex just for the sake of it, it could be a lot lower poly, have a think about making it elegant and using the minimum effort.

hammer: it's faster get the shape with NURBS, poly conversion is so it can be rigged later. i tried rigging NURBS once before and it failed badly

lofting the sword was done because that's how i saw someone else do it. same with the motion trails.

there are only lots of polys at the front of the black part because it's going to shut.

motion trails because it was more accurate than drawing without a guide to snap to.

i thought that about the arms too

gster: yeah, i have more poly's than i need, i'm well aware of that

redone the arms...

one is longer than the other but i think i like the shorter one better...

the hands took forever to make...

http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._5700446_n.jpg

there's no detail yet but an AO render for fun... and because it's all the rage in the challenge forums
http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._3678724_n.jpg

which arm? both or just the long one?

looking at it now the black thing needs to puff out more...

i'll puff out the area under the thumb too

heh... the hands have a similar polycount to the body and arms themselves :p

Both arms, but not too much shorter than the right hand one.

And now you've pointed it out the black part of the armour would look good if it was inflated slightly, it'd create more shadows when it comes to rendering and make it look more real.
(Because I do see eyeballs in armour walking down the street swinging swords everyday...)

Still, overall it's looking good, I really like the style of your work, it's instantly recognizable as yours for one, and always seems to have a good sense of fun about it.

well, the black part is meant to be raised significantly from the grey part, as shown in the AO render, but it's quite hard to tell as shown in the coloured render

i think maybe i'll make the arms just the shoulder, forearm and hand as per the original concept (although the original concept did have the stumps for hands, but stumps can't really hold anything too well, as shown by kirby)

i'll also try the floating hands thing... as a friend suggested... although i don't really want to do that, but i'll try it anyway, can't be that difficult to quickly whip up

thanks dango, i think i like it if my original work is recognized as mine :)

Looking foward to seeing the progress in this. Great idea.
Get it EYEdea.. anyways.
No crits just wanted to say its looking great.