Kris - Mk I

And here he is! All set and ready to go with his awesome tie.

Next step is to rig the characters! Adding the bones now will allow me to catch any major problems nice and early on

Kris - Part V - Finishing Touches

Of course! Kris is missing his tie! His badge of office, sign of dignity and brazen display of sharp taste in clothing. I don't know why... but adding 'human' clothing to a character always gives them more of a 'human' feel to them. I guess adding any "human" characteristics allows the viewer to identify with them (Just like many cartoon animals walk on their hind legs, rather than their natural quadrupedal way...)

The tie itself was nothing too taxing. The knot was made from a cube, pulled about in the 'Edit Poly' mode and smoothed down. The tie itself was made from an elongated cuboid. I even went to the trouble of adding the dimple too (I love ties). The tie was also built with several polygons, to allow it to move and sway when rigged (Yes, even the tie will have its own sets of bones!)

The band around the neck was painlessly achieved with a huge disk. Kris' body covers the majority of it, and it's a lot easier to work it this way than to try and snake a ribbon perfectly around his body.

Kris - Part IV - Legs

Unlike Carl, Kris doesn't wear shoes (He's too old-school for the modern 'hip' trends). Instead, his feet are more like lampshades, attached to thin wiry legs.

To set the ball rolling: Same as always... make a few holes and extrude out a base. Simple.

The legs were made in the same way as the eye stalks. Instead of giving him a fixed knee joint (Like Carl), I decided that Kris would be more suited to bendy 'elastic' legs, much like his eyes. Instead of a single clean bend, his legs would host several bones and have more of a malleable feel to them. The style compliments his eye stalks, and also works nicely with his oversized feet and skinny legs.

The feet themselves were built from a single extruded cone. The border at the bottom of the legs was 'brought out' with the use of the ever-faithful "Scale" tool with "Shift" held down. The newly made cone was pulled down, and several additional vertices were added to it using the 'connect' tool (In order to give me more edges to play with). As a finishing touch, the bottoms of the feet were pulled out even more (To act like pads) and subsequently capped (To seal the mesh, of course)

Blasted with the turboSmooth... we have our finished Kris! Hmm... something's missing though...

Kris - Part III - Arms

As before, the arms of Kris are a near carbon-copy of Carl's. We've seen this before so I'll be brief...

As before, a hole was punched into the mesh and the border extruded to create a makeshift shoulder joint to aid movement when the arm was rigged.

An 8-sided cylinder was made, with the same pattern as before: 3 small sections for the shoulder, a single one for the upper arm, 3 for the elbow, 1 for the forearm and 3 for the wrist.

Gifted with the hindsight of Carl's hand, Kris' hand came out a lot smoother and looked far more realistic. The thumb in particular was modelled with greater accuracy. Not only was it extruded at an angle, but it was bent downwards slightly, in order to help it function as the opposing thumb (Rather than another digit poking out at the side!). That said, the majority of the modelling process (And number of edges) was the same as before, except the hand only had 2 height segments this time, as opposed to 3.

When smoothed, the hand looks like this... and I have to say I'm exceptionally happy with how it's turned out!

Next stop: Attaching it to the wrist. As before, an 8-sided hole was extruded out of the hand, so that it fitted easily to the wrist.

And again, finishing by welding it to the main model

Blast it with a bit of TurboSmooth and voila!

Kris - Part II - Eyes

Though on the end of stalks, Kris' eyes are far simpler - technically speaking - than Carl's. Essentially, the stalks are built in the same way Carl's antennae were made, and a pair of eyeballs thrown into the end.

The start should be very familiar by now. Punch a few holes into the top of Kris' head. Because the stalks are thicker than Carl's, I'm not able to get away with simple square holes this time. In the same way the mouth was made: Diagonals were cut into the mesh to create more of a circular gap.

The stalks were then pulled out of the mesh to just under the height of the body (The eyeballs were going to add to the height)

The next stage was to add more connections between the stalks, in order to allow them to bend properly when the bones were added. Selecting the length-way edges of the stalks, the 'Connect' tool was employed to add around 15 new edges, evenly spaced out along the mesh. This was a lot easier than trying to extrude the stalks 15 times!

The eyeballs were simply a pair of spheres with smaller, flatter spheres acting as the pupils.

The spheres that made the eyeballs were then cloned and made slightly larger, in order to create the eyelids. They were also hit with the 'hemisphere' option to reduce them to around 50% of their original shape (A half-sphere, surprisingly enough!), to signify the eyelids fully open. (It would be easier to pull the vertices down over the eyes, to create blinking, rather than starting with closed eyes and trying to push them back). Then, in the same way that the antennae heads were attached to the stalks, the eyelids had a small hole cut into them, and subsequently attached to the ends of the stalks.

And there's Kris with his eyes!

Kris - Part I - Mouth

This next section covers the creation of Carl's good friend: Kris. Though their bodies have considerable differences, the fundamental structure of the 2 aliens bear several similarities. As a result, the majority of the techniques applied to Carl can be applied to Kris too, so there's fewer screenshots and explanations this time around (Aside from the sections unique to Kris).

As before, the mouth was made by punching a hole into the mesh, and plugging it with the 'Scale' Tool + 'Shift'. Kris' mouth, however, is smaller than Carl's, so this time around, the hole was a lot smaller and more narrow. Other than the difference in shape, the techniques were identical.

Once again, it was time to close the mouth. Like Carl, Kris' lower lip was going to play a prominent role in his pout (I don't know what it is about the pout, it has a really funny look about it on cartoons!)

The top lip was then brought down too. What worked nicely at this point was the inadvertant grooves/wrinkles that appeared alongside the mouth adding a little bit more realism to the mesh.

Closing the mouth properly proved somewhat trickier this time around (The smaller hole meant that the vertices would often bunch up and become clustered, thus making them trickier to work with). In the end, I had to seal the gap by extruding a bump on the top of lower lip (Thus closing the mouth and adding a good dose of definition to the lower lip). Luckily, it seemed to work in my favour, and the stern pout of Kris came out nicely. (That said, this was around the 3rd attempt...)

Carl Mk I

And so, I would like to present the first finished rendition of Carl. There's still a lot of work to do with the bones, texture and morpher... but it's certainly a very strong start!

Next step - Time to create his erstwhile associate - Kris!

Carl - Part V - The Legs (and Sneakers)

The final requirement for Carl is to give him something to allow him to move from place to place (and look super-trendy in the process)... and so thus section covers the creation of the legs and sneakers

The legs themselves were almost carbon-copies of the arms. An octagonal cylinder with 1 segment for the hips and 3 for the knee-cap and ankle.

VAs before, this was connected to the underside of Carl, who, as always, had a few holes punched into him before attachment.

The final step was perhaps one of the more taxing (thus is the price for fashion I guess!). In hindsight, blob-like alien feet might have been simpler... but a decision is a decision - The sneakers were staying! The key was just to work slowly. So, I started out with a large cuboid divided into several segments (In order to give me plenty of edges and vertices to work with)

The first step was to build the shape from the side-PoV. This simply involved a dip being made where the ankle enters into the shoe, and to round the front edge down. In this state, the shoes are passable for a robot... but not exactly the latest in high-street fashion...

So the next step was to start working on the curvature of the shoes, to create the bump and contours, and to further refine the side-port. Though progress was being made (albeit slowly), it was time to call in reinforcements...

So grabbing one of my trainers, I held it in front of me and observed the sole. Flipping the viewport to 'Bottom' view, I recreated the shape as accurately as I could...

And amazingly, that seemed to do the trick nicely. The shape was certainly looking much more shoe-like now. The next step was to add the fancy extras to it

The fancy patch on top of the shoe came next. Much like the shoe, this started life as a cuboid (albeit a flat one)

Through trial and error, the patch was made to fit snugly over the front of the shoe and follow the contours accurately.

Next up came the sock (A simple cone shape) and the tongue. Much like the rest of the shoe: The tongue was another cuboid, stuck onto the front of the fancy patch.

A bit of fun with pulling the vertices later, the tongue started to take one more of a tongue-esque shape.

The sole was then added, which was (yet another) cuboid, and altered to fit the outline of the shoe.

The final step was to add the laces. Build from cylinders and flat tubes, the laces quickly took shape and were attached to the front of the tongue. I tried adding the full laces, but those seemed to be better achieved via a texture on the patch.

I tried changing the colours of the shoes, as something didn't look quite right about them... yet, even as the colours took on a more fashionable form, the shoes still looked out of place. After a quick bite to eat, I found that, when coming back to it, the shoes were far too large on Carl. They looked like clown shoes and far too unwieldy!

A quick blast of the 'Scale' Tool, and the shoes suddenly looked like a perfect fit for Carl! Now he can be the envy of his alien pals with his red-hot sneakers! (Which, incidentally make him run faster)

Carl - Part IV - The Arms (and Hands)

Whilst the mouth was the most complicated section in terms of morpher and modelling, the arms (and more specifically, the hands) require the greatest level of accuracy and finesse in terms of rigging and movement. Nothing will ruin the final video more than a poorly constructed hand which can barely grip a chess piece, let alone incorporate the smaller digit movements I wish to include!

As before - Punch a hole into Carl and build the body part onto it.

The arm started life as a simple cylinder. However, the important detail was that it specifically had just 8 sides. The reason for this was to allow the arm to connect perfectly to the shoulder joint. If you look at the first image, you will notice that the shoulder has 8 vertices making up the border. In lieu of this, the arm itself also has 8 vertices, so that both can be fused together without any leftover vertices causing a nuisance. The arm was also broken into several segments: 1 small segment added to one end for the shoulder joint - 3 edges added near the centre to form the elbow joint - and 3 at the end to form the wrist. It's these vital edges which will hold the key changes in shape when the bones are added.

The hand started life as a simple cuboid. It's structure was very specific, however: 3 segments high, 3 long and 5 wide. The reason why is shown below:

If you look closely, the fingers are extended from the cuboid, with tiny gaps in between. This is where the width of 5 segments comes in. 2 of them are very thin bridges between the other 3, which host the fingers. The length of 3 is required so that the thumb can be built in the middle of the hand (Note: This is later changed to the end segment by the wrist). The height of 3 also allows the hand to host contours, rather than retain a cuboid shape. The intricate details of the digits are outlined below:

The fingers are made of 2 sections (Later upgraded to 3), and the thumb comprises of 1 (Later upgraded to 2), all of which are bridged with 3 tiny edges. The reason for the 3 edges is to allow them to fold in on each other during motion, rather than have a single edge which will act like an elastic band and create a 'pinch' in the middle of the bend.

Before moving on, it made sense to fully test the rigging of the hand (After all, it would be a waste of time to build unusable hands, only to discover so after the model was finished!). The bones were dutifully added to the hand, and were given the simple task of bending the fingers slightly. So far so good.

It was at this time I also started to get to grips with the 'Envelope' tool. After you use the 'Skin' modifier to attach bones, you can alter the area of effect (AoE) of each bone with the 'Edit Envelopes' option. This allows you to select each bone, and see the radius and strength of its impact.

To cut a long process short: Using the handles located around it: Move the envelope 'cage' until the areas affected are the only ones you want them to. The AoE is denoted by the colour on the mesh. With red being strong influence and blue being minor. As a rule of thumb - You do not want to even see blue in any area you do not wish for the bone to move. Blue should only be seen on edges where it meets other bones (And the influence is thus divided between them)

These are some of the shapes pulled after correctly moving the envelopes around. It was at this point that the low number of finger-thumb segments became apparent. For the time being, however, it was passable and the bends relatively clean.

With the mesh completed, the final step was to weld it all to the initial frame. Luckily, the octagonal cylinder made the connections an easy process. Each corner of the octagon was linked with the corresponding edge of the shoulder joint. A quick application of the 'Weld' tool fused the work together.

And there's one arm all connected up to the body.

The next step was to connect the hand to the wrist. As with the shoulder joint, the hand needed to contain the same number of vertices as the wrist (8) to create the clean join. It took a bit of trial-and-error: But the above solution created an 8-sided hole to connect to the wrist.

And it was from here that the wrist was extruded and linked together (In the same fashion as the shoulder joint), and subsequently welded.

And here are the finished limbs! Note: This was created before I went to the lecture where we learnt how to create hands properly. It was during then that I incorporated the 3 segments into the fingers, and re-created the thumb from scratch in a more realistic location and with 2 segments.