I recently got a bug up my rear to re-design a character for a game I'm making. I'm not done, but making progress.
This is the old design that I recently abandoned.
And here is my new one. (Spoilered for HUGE!)
I have to give her her shoes, and the hair is not final. I'll probably go back to the straight hair like in the original. The new dress is not "on" the new body. (I have to merge the two models together and delete the body under her clothes. The reason for the short skirt is because the long gress was a pain in the ass to animate.
I still need to color her after I'm done. That's gonna be a major pain in the ass.
Expected anime girls in a blender. I leave this thread strangely disappointed. (not creepy)
Anyway, I don't know much about 3d stuff, but her cranium seems overall too large. Might just be because of the large hair, but it seems very apparent from the side view you have of her.
it certainly looks like anime, which is exactly what i don't like about it
have you considered any other styles or
edit: I understand your target market is people who are wanting to learn japanese and like video games so the style sort of fits but, don't you think it is a little overdone?
I think in this instance people should probably not bother with the obligatory 'anime is by and large not a good style of art to learn' b/c this guy obviously knows what hes doing and specifically wants to model anime characters, its not just some 13 year old who wants to draw like DBZ.
Anyway, I can't offer any helpful advice, just don't want to see this turn into an unhelpful thread
Now this model still has a lot of placeholders for stuff that's isn't "done". The actual "finished" model is this...
I fixed up the goofy angle and made her more straight. I also re-worked the face and added some shoes. I also straightened out the arms a smidge. (The face, hair and shoes are from the old model. Those were fine)
I'm in the process of modeling a new dress around the body, borrowing from the design on the old one. The hair is also a work in progress.
If you take a look, the hands/head are a little higher in polygon count than the rest of the body. That's a little trick I picked up from SquareEnix. These are the things that people draw attention to. You can sacrifice polycounts in the body as long as the parts that are important look good.
----
One of the amusing problems I've come across is that that when I bounce my model off of professional CG forums, such as CGTalk, I get a lot of flack for the style. One of the problems is that I'm told I'm modeling the character "wrong". The big debate is always the head/eyes.
Anime is a 2D medium, what throws people is that, unlike non-japanese cartoons, Anime bodies are *incredibly* proportional to real people. The problem is that the face is 2D, and extruding that into a 3rd dimension requires you to break a few rules.
First, in typical human-like 3D art, the eyes are globes that sit inside a head. Anime requires the eyes to be completely flat. (The ball that makes up an anime eye will easily be twice as big as the skull.) Another is the diminutive nose and mouth, which don't match the rest of the head, causing it to look balloon-like. The hair fills this and creates a proper breaks in form to make it appear more proportional.
My hair, however, needs to be "fluffed out" a bit more.
The irritating thing is, I have to learn this on my own. A lot of the advice works great for Caucasian/realistic models, but falls flat when making Japanese-like cartoon characters. What makes Anime modeling so interesting though is that the faces are Asian hidden under a layer of caricature. It took me the longest time to figure that out.
Lord knows I don't want to come off as a jerk and just point out the negatives, but... this has remained basically the same since you last came here. So long as you are sticking only to anime as a reference you'll stay stuck in that akward head stage you're at now.
unlike non-japanese cartoons, Anime bodies are *incredibly* proportional to real people.
This is a very broad generalization. It all comes down to the illustrator's style. I've seen cartoony anime with no sense of realistic proportion, just as I've seen non-anime cartoons that have dead acurate anatomy.
The problem is that the face is 2D, and extruding that into a 3rd dimension requires you to break a few rules.
The problem here is clear; you may know how the head is structured but you don't understand how the head is structured. If you did, your 2D sketch would show this and you would have no issues going from one dimesion to the other.
I think the head is alright, as far as 3d manga goes. But that always ends up looking friggin wierd, IMO, no matter how well you do it. Its just a style that doesn't translate particularly well. Even the manga-esque that do translate into 3d end up being fairly realistic, like squarenix stuff, and any other modern 3d JRPG. They certainly dont keep the 2d anime style of huge bloated heads and beach ball eyes.
Anyway...
The body I'm having real problems with.
Overall, the proportions are WAY off. And dont give me the "manga proportions are different", because they arnt anything even close to that.
-Head is really really tiny. If anything, for manga, it would be larger then realistic, what with the whole cuteness angle. You give tiny heads to huge muscle bound behemoths, not classic anime chicks.
-Torso is oddly shaped. She has a stubby neck, and sort of a hunched back. The geomatry for her ribcage, stomach, and pelvis are all really wierd in that they dont follow the natural curvature at all. Makes her look sorta lumpy. Most manga girls really push the "hourglass" figure, and have pencil thin waists. And also, because it is manga, and is soooooo simplified, you realy shouldnt bother modeling complex geomatry like her ribcage, or stomach muscles. The simpler you keep it, the cleaner and better it will look.
-Her limbs are ballooning, and seem unaturally plump. Again, this is because of poor geomatry. The edge loops should follow the curves of whatever it is youre modeling. Like, look at the lines on her calves or hips. Thats not a natural edge flow.
This is a low poly mesh of a model I made earlier this year. She's a bit beefier then your girl, but you can see what I mean by flowing geomatry and edge looping.
Also, are you working off of a model sheet? It is VERY important to use one in order to see what the hell youre doing.
I recently got a bug up my rear to re-design a character for a game I'm making. I'm not done, but making progress.
This is the old design that I recently abandoned.
And here is my new one. (Spoilered for HUGE!)
I have to give her her shoes, and the hair is not final. I'll probably go back to the straight hair like in the original. The new dress is not "on" the new body. (I have to merge the two models together and delete the body under her clothes. The reason for the short skirt is because the long gress was a pain in the ass to animate.
I still need to color her after I'm done. That's gonna be a major pain in the ass.
Posts
Anyway, I don't know much about 3d stuff, but her cranium seems overall too large. Might just be because of the large hair, but it seems very apparent from the side view you have of her.
it certainly looks like anime, which is exactly what i don't like about it
have you considered any other styles or
edit: I understand your target market is people who are wanting to learn japanese and like video games so the style sort of fits but, don't you think it is a little overdone?
Anyway, I can't offer any helpful advice, just don't want to see this turn into an unhelpful thread
Now this model still has a lot of placeholders for stuff that's isn't "done". The actual "finished" model is this...
I fixed up the goofy angle and made her more straight. I also re-worked the face and added some shoes. I also straightened out the arms a smidge. (The face, hair and shoes are from the old model. Those were fine)
I'm in the process of modeling a new dress around the body, borrowing from the design on the old one. The hair is also a work in progress.
If you take a look, the hands/head are a little higher in polygon count than the rest of the body. That's a little trick I picked up from SquareEnix. These are the things that people draw attention to. You can sacrifice polycounts in the body as long as the parts that are important look good.
----
One of the amusing problems I've come across is that that when I bounce my model off of professional CG forums, such as CGTalk, I get a lot of flack for the style. One of the problems is that I'm told I'm modeling the character "wrong". The big debate is always the head/eyes.
Anime is a 2D medium, what throws people is that, unlike non-japanese cartoons, Anime bodies are *incredibly* proportional to real people. The problem is that the face is 2D, and extruding that into a 3rd dimension requires you to break a few rules.
First, in typical human-like 3D art, the eyes are globes that sit inside a head. Anime requires the eyes to be completely flat. (The ball that makes up an anime eye will easily be twice as big as the skull.) Another is the diminutive nose and mouth, which don't match the rest of the head, causing it to look balloon-like. The hair fills this and creates a proper breaks in form to make it appear more proportional.
My hair, however, needs to be "fluffed out" a bit more.
The irritating thing is, I have to learn this on my own. A lot of the advice works great for Caucasian/realistic models, but falls flat when making Japanese-like cartoon characters. What makes Anime modeling so interesting though is that the faces are Asian hidden under a layer of caricature. It took me the longest time to figure that out.
Does the body model look OK?
And further more, this paragraph killed me:
Anime is a style, not a medium.
This is a very broad generalization. It all comes down to the illustrator's style. I've seen cartoony anime with no sense of realistic proportion, just as I've seen non-anime cartoons that have dead acurate anatomy.
The problem here is clear; you may know how the head is structured but you don't understand how the head is structured. If you did, your 2D sketch would show this and you would have no issues going from one dimesion to the other.
Anyway...
The body I'm having real problems with.
Overall, the proportions are WAY off. And dont give me the "manga proportions are different", because they arnt anything even close to that.
-Head is really really tiny. If anything, for manga, it would be larger then realistic, what with the whole cuteness angle. You give tiny heads to huge muscle bound behemoths, not classic anime chicks.
-Torso is oddly shaped. She has a stubby neck, and sort of a hunched back. The geomatry for her ribcage, stomach, and pelvis are all really wierd in that they dont follow the natural curvature at all. Makes her look sorta lumpy. Most manga girls really push the "hourglass" figure, and have pencil thin waists. And also, because it is manga, and is soooooo simplified, you realy shouldnt bother modeling complex geomatry like her ribcage, or stomach muscles. The simpler you keep it, the cleaner and better it will look.
-Her limbs are ballooning, and seem unaturally plump. Again, this is because of poor geomatry. The edge loops should follow the curves of whatever it is youre modeling. Like, look at the lines on her calves or hips. Thats not a natural edge flow.
This is a low poly mesh of a model I made earlier this year. She's a bit beefier then your girl, but you can see what I mean by flowing geomatry and edge looping.
Also, are you working off of a model sheet? It is VERY important to use one in order to see what the hell youre doing.
I am having a problem viewing your images.