Jan-feb - Noob - arran
 

Hello,

Great idea for a competition.

I have been playing around with maya for a few months, so i have only done a bit of modelling and have no texturing experience.

I was going to do a giraffe, but it looks like someone beat me to it, so I'm going to try a hippopotamus.

Good luck everyone.

Arran.

Just cos someone else is doing something doesn't mean to say you can't do the same thing. Good luck with whatever you choose though

ok, first day off work. Here is my progress after a couple of hours. Using the Jae-jin Choi method.

Think I may regret doing a hippo, though, as his mouth is giving me a headache. Oh well.

here is a bit of an update. Going very slowly, but it's starting to come together.

and here is a reference picture.

and another

Here's another update. Trying to get the basic shape. No real detail yet. The mouth was a pain. Had to rebuild it a couple of times.

any comments / criticisms?

It's looking very good. The only thing that looks a bit strange to me is the shape of nostrils, they are much square. The rest is OK.

yeah, you're right. thanks. still a lot of work to do.

It looks you're using subds in our model. If so I strongly recommend you make your base model of polygons, and then when it's complete, convert it to subds. It faster, easier to fix, and makes lighter files. Subds are more apropriate when you are working on details.

thanks a lot jramauri. I had been wondering about that. I'll give it a go.

nice shape to the head, its coming on really well :)

why dont you build the inner of the mouth so that you can pose it with it wide open just like in the photo?
it's much more impresive...

Thanks for the comments and suggestions t1ck135 and Legolas_hv.

Yeah, I was thinking of doing the inside of the mouth, but I don't have any experience rigging, so I wasn't sure how to go about doing it. Should I open the mouth while modelling to build the inside and then push it all back into place, or do I just hide the top part while modelling the bottom jaw?

Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm going to keep building the outside first. Thanks for your help.

arran

hi arran. usually the geometry is rigged after completition. I´d cut the geo and model it in parts. this is what I would prefer.

regards!