Modelling - texturing - rigging - Animating in the work place
 

I have recently got into maya and have done the free modelling tutorials and have just completed the modelling of the orc head. At the moment I am a freelance After Effects animator and compositor but i want to eventually become a character designer. To become a character designer and modeller how much of the above areas should I know, or what should i specialsie in and get the most practice?

Do you mean a character designer, like making concepts or a character modeler, where you get a design and then model?

If its the latter then I would say, modeling and texturing would be your main things to go for. With a good knowlage of rigging as well.

There was a nice quite indepth tutorial in last months (think it was that) 3d world about creating a dino beast, well worth looking into as it goes over reasons why you need to know the whole process, such as modeling for animation and how making a little test rig will help out in the modeling before going further in the pipeline

I think I'd like to do model my own designs but that probably rarely happens in the proffesional world. I hope to make my first 3d short film this year so I want to give myself a good background of all areas.

Thankyou I will try and find that tutorial.

yeah you rarely get to do 100% your own stuff. Being able to model from a provided concept is key.

As Mike says its rare. I did 4months of character modeling on Headcases and I worked directly with the Character designer, sometimes theres room for suggestion to improve or add extra to 'make' the character more visually interesting, but usually by the time the design gets to you its already locked down and approved ready for modelling and texturing

cheers
Jay

Thanks for your replys they help alot. This is my model before texturing. I think I can now go ahead and model my own stuff, but definitly need to get alot/months/probably years of practice in to be able to accurately model other peoples concepts to get work, as my orc looks nothing like the one in the tutorial.