Construction of Character over!

After working through my character for the past 2 weeks, I have finally been able to finish the style, shape and rendering of my gryphon character. Using the layer templates and character proportion boxes, it was difficult trying to construct within a limit. While constructing the body, I started by using a cube in the middle box, used extrude to form the arms and then turning it to turbosmooth to test it out. It took a lot of time fixing the vectors of the arms to as it looked more like a body instead of being out of tact and whenever I felt I did all that I could with it I then moved onto the legs. One leg was easy to form by extruding the bottom of the body but whenever it came to the other leg it was forming properly which left me to copying the part of the body with of the body to as it would be symmetrical but made the body itself overlap but I had to make do. Next was constructing the feet which I did by using a cube as well and using extrude, rotate and vectors to form the toes and shape of the foot so as it would look more like a gryphon’s talons. But placing them exactly in the template was hard to do so I tried to scale them as accurately as I could.

Next was the wings which I created by using a plane with a sketches that I drew of the back of my character so that it would be easier to shape around. Once again I used box and extrude to shape around the outline of the feathers and using the vectors it helped to form the shape more accurately. When finished I rotated them vertically and placed the wing onto the back of my character and mirrored it so as it would be symmetrical. The head was just using sphere and scaling it to the right size for the top box, put I would work more on it after I finished the other features. The eyes and beak I created by using box, but instead I turned it into turbosmooth and put it under editable poly so as it would be capable to use the vectors to shape the eye and the features to apply on top of it. But whenever finished, it was hard to place on the head because the eyes and beak needed to be curved which I wasn't familiar on how to do. So I placed each vector on the top and bottom into the head so as it would connect better. I also tried put on a hair and fur modifier on the whole body but trying to shape the hair was difficult to do so I cut it out but I used the modifier to put on the top of the tail that I form of the back of my character by selecting near the bottom of the back view and using extrude, rotate and scale and placing a small sphere to use the hair and fur modifier on.

The last details to my character were turning the turbosmooth on the body too editable poly and manipulating the vectors on the chest to engrave the Japanese air symbol. This was by pushing the vectors that I needed back. Next was also turning the turbosmooth on the head into editable poly and using the vectors to make curved grooves at the side of the head to make it look like it had some form of feathers because it looked to plain while it was round. I did the same for the top of the head to extrude them further for the detail of the feathered eyebrows which I thought turned out quite well. I also created a staff for my character by using cylinder, turned it to editable poly and making it looked curved like an old wooden stick and also by placing a small sphere around the staff making it look more authentic. Placing 3 planes around the character helped it lighting when I applied a target spot and omni light to help bring out the reflection and detail in my character and especially whenever I added metallic paint to my character and the planes.

I am really happy with the outcome of my character because I did not follow any kind of tutorial for creating such a 3D model, so it was all from scratch. Even though the body shape of my character does not entirely fit the templates for which it was meant to and the other changes that I left out from my sketches was the feathers rotating around the body and the colour, I think I still did the best that I could from constructing my first character model on 3D Max. If I was to make any changes it would be to have shaped the body more like it was requested, to have been more accurate with the features of what I designed in my sketches and to have more time to use different material settings to see which would have been best suited for my character. But over all I am very pleased with my 3D model.

Here are a few screenshots: