With the idea currently bubbling about and being left to simmer over a gentle heat, in order to infuse it with brilliance and creativity... it's time to get started on the characters that will be bringing life to the idea! There's a lot to do, however... now that I'm working with an organic model, there's a lot more room for error than if I was making another robot. This isn't about making a nice-looking model any more... now it has to be fully functional and mobile. Each character needs to be built so that it can be rigged efficiently for movement... as well as having a large amount of morpher templates hiding in the background to create the multitude of moods and expressions I'd want these lovely beings to exhibit. Luckily, I've learnt well from my previous works, and realise the importance of putting in the extra hours now, in order to shave off several more hours later. I only have to look at my work with DiscoverBot to see this. The model took several days, but the rigging made it so easy to move and animate; that each video was completed in a single 6-8 hour sitting.
And so, we'll begin with Carl - The short, dumpy alien.
His body is very much like a Butternut Squash (What a wonderful name for something so healthy!) - which is easily achieved by taking a standard sphere and pulling up the top part slightly. In order to prevent stretching and to give me some more edges to work with, I used the 'Connect' tool to fill the gap.
The beginnings of the mouth started from punching a sizeable hole in the newly formed squash. Before doing this, I cut a few diagonal lines along the mesh with the 'Cut' tool (Funnily enough), to create more of a rounded edge (Without this, his mouth would have been a rectangle...) Note to anyone else doing this, make sure you double-check the welding on your vertices before advancing (Select them all and click 'Weld' on a low threshold)... the cut tool sometimes splits a single vertex into 2, and it's not until later that the cracks show up.
Then, in a seemingly self-defeating move - I patched up the hole. The logic here is that the patch now follows the contours I want it to (A round, spider-web-like shape... rather than a collection of squares). Performing this was pretty simple - Using the 'Border' selection mode (Middle of the row of 5), I selected the rim of the mouth, and holding 'Shift', used the scale tool inwards 4 times. The final hole was plugged with the 'Cap' function. It might not look like much now... but pull the outer-most edges out, apply a turboSmooth, and...
Bingo! We have the start of a mouth! It's a little bit shallow, however, so it's a good idea to pull all of the inner edges back into the head, like so:
That's more like it - A mouth is now starting to form nicely. Only problem at the moment is that the lips are perfectly circular, more like the rim of a bottle than a pair of lips. The corners of the mouth were therefore pushed back on level with the cheeks:
That's looking a lot more realistic now. The prominent edges of the lips are now just the top and bottom. Essentially, I am done with the creation of the mouth - as this is how it should look when fully open. However, not many chess players play with their mouth wide open, and in terms of an 'initial stance', the pout sketched in the concept drawings earlier would be preferable. It's in a far more versatile position and would save me having to try and close the mouth after I've rigged the model (Which, if there was a problem with the model/bones... would be an undesirable moment to say the least... with plenty of cursing. Oh yes, lots of cursing no doubt). That said, I'm paranoid and have saved a separate rendition of the model at each stage... just in case...
The first and most obvious start to closing the mouth was from the lower lip. The pout requires the lower lip to be pushed up a lot higher than normal, and I also intend for Carl to have a very prominent lower maw (Almost like a bullfrog). So carefully working with the vertexes, I pulled up the outer-most edge and brought in the lower sections of the inner edges where necessary. At least 2 sets of edges were needed to help make the lips prominent (A single set would be reduced down too far on smoothing). After a little while of tinkering - Carl now started to exhibit the frog-like mouth I was aiming for - Good start.
Next up for moving was the top lip. As before, starting with the outer-most edges and bringing in the inner ones were necessary, I slowly pulled the top lip down and saw the results after smoothing. It was important for the pout that the top to be very flat. A prominent bulge of the top lip, along with the lower lip, would make Carl look like he was puffing out his cheeks... or was a puffer fish. Not quite the look I was going for...
Almost there... right now that's more of an indignant look where you'd be muttering to yourself about today's youth, the price of tea, politics and the weather. It was also important to keep the edges of the corner of the mouth in line with the changes of the lips - otherwise a very prominent pinching effect would show.
That's more like it! We have our pout. The good news is that that is perhaps the worst bit of Carl out of the way (Modelling-wise, at least...)
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