Final comments

I have enjoyed this project and although a lot of it is new to me I feel that I have learnt a lot. I would like to also point out that a lot of effort was put into the designing process but it has been enjoyable. I hope you like my work. Josh.

Final touches

Obviously now we are towards the end of the designing process and what my design really needs to create more character and to stand out more is colour. I decided not to use black and grey as it is the colour most gorrilas have naturally but instead to attempt a blue and dark yellow. I did this just to make my character different from the rest and also sticking to my earlier descicion in the designing process when using paint. I selected my colours and using maya applied it to Cornelius accordingly. This is also the first time I have ever used colour in Maya and see it as a satisfying attempt.

Completed outline

As mentioned earlier all that was needed for the complete outline to be fininished was to join the vertices together and then we have one completed object.

Body completed

Now we can see that the character is looking a lot more like the original design and now that i have completed one side of it I will now mirror what i have done in order to create a symetrical design alonside. I have done this and now it is a chase of joing up the vertices on the symetrical object and merging them together and make one object. This will then be my completed outline of my character.

Continued

Now I have the head shaped exactly how I wanted it Its time to "merge" the shapes together so that they are one object. I as you can see have done this and also deleted the faces on the side of the entire object so that when it comes to mirroring what I have done so far I can join them with no problems.

Head and body

Now for the head. I decided to do this as a seperate shape and to follow the design easier by pulling away the body in order to see the design clearer. This is what I would say was the most challenging part of the design process as it took a lot of time and accuracy to get the shape correct.

Outline of body on one side

Ok now although we are only doing one side there is a reason which is the way I am going to fininsh the outline/ shape of my charater is to do one side and then mirror the image making it symetrical. Also you will notice that I have not included the head as I plan to do it seperately and fuse the shapes tiogether to complete it. By extruding the faces and the planes and dragging the objects out I succesfully managed to shape the body. As we can see it is very important to stay accurate and make sure that we are following both side and front view of the design.

Continued

Ok the next step was to create a polygon in front view and with adding subdivides, begin to shape/ extrude the edges and faces into the shape that we want so that it begins the outline shape of the character. As we can see the subdivides gives a lot more freedom to the shaping of the polygon.

Beginning Maya

I have here began the design process of Cornelius using Maya. The first step to this was to look back at my concept art design of the front and back of my character and import the images into maya. This acts as a template and guideline making it far easier to stick to than without. I have used two cameras from the front and side view which are projecting these images on the plane.

Character progression Decision

I now have chosen out of my two characters to proceed with the design of Cornelius and begin to use Maya 2010 and put into practice what I have learnt. I have had to stick to a time schedule so therefore will be fully designing one of the two characters. Now I will begin to explain the process of this.

Adding colour continued

Here we can see Eck McGlone in colour and what I would like him to look like. The colour pallete in "Paint" is fairly limited therefore this is still very basic compared to how the characters will end up.

Adding Colour

First I will start with Cornelius who i decided I will mostly be colouring blue as to avoid the undetailed colour of black and make him more unique. Also i have decided that a yellow colour for his hands and stomach will go well together. I added colour to these designs simply by using paint as it is to only give us an idea of how the final design will look. Also to help if there are any colours needed changing it is good to know earlier.

Cornelius Final design/ Stencil

Again we can now see the final design for my character Cornelius. I have produced a froont and side view for when I come to use Maya. This is also the reason why I have designed them with their arms up as it helps when mirroring the image in Maya. The next and final part is to add what colours I will be using for each charater.

Wee Eck McGlone Final design/ Stencil

This is my final design for Wee Eck McGlone. I have decided that it is accurate enough to use and am happy with it. As we can see I have done a front and side view so that it is clear enough to follow.

Progression

As we can now see I have progressed the characters enough to begin to put the designs into practice. I have now drawn outthe final stencil for the characters that i will use. I will stick to them as best I can when it comes to the modelling stage. I have measured and accurately framed each design so that they are symmetrical. This is to avoid having any problems when using them in Maya.

Clay models: Wee Eck Mcglone

Now its time to look at my next model for Wee Eck McGlone. Now again we have certain changes that were made to this character again with the glasses and also I decided not to include his hat just to see which looked better. It again is a chase of experimenting with ideas and trying out various ideas to find what i am most comfortable with. Creating this character in clay was easier than Cornelius as his body shape was a lot more simple and did not need too much effort in terms of getting the weight evenly distributed in order for him to stand upright. Again by creating a clay model it gives me a better understanding of the character and the texture of him. Another thing was what he would look like from behind etc which although quite straightforward was not something that during my earlier concept art was not considered.

Clay models: Cornelius

I have created as we can see a clay model of cornelius which took a lot of time and delicacy as the overall shape of the gorilla. I have done my best to stick to the concept art design whilst creating this model although to some extent changes were made. I decided not to include glasses as after many attempts it proved to difficult a task to create clay glasses. However I am happy with the model and it has given me a better understanding of the character and think that it will definately help me when shaping it using maya.

Final concept ideas for characters

I have now come to the final stages of my concept art and decided on what ideas and designs I will be using for my characters. I have chosen these as they fitted best in my opinion to what I imagined them to be from the brief. I have created them and both have evolved from the original ideas and now how much more life and character in them. To the left we can see now roughly how they will look and I am now going to create clay models of both following these designs as best I can.

Expressions of characters

An important thing when doing concept art is to play around with different expressions the characters can have and what will be used. This also gives the artist a greater understanding and comfort for the character. So I decided on drawing a few favourite ones i could use for both my characters and also you will notice that changes in terms of the face also changed at this point as i decided not to include a beard for Wee Eck McGlone. This was because although he may be older he is still trying to look younger so therefore to shave him would also add to the effect in my opinion. I decided aswell that Cornelius had to have a more reserved expression as to follow the brief he is the best behaved resident in London Zoo and has intelligence and maturity.

As my design for Cornelius began to evolve I also bagn to work on my other character Wee Eck McGlone which after many sketches and ideas I finally decided on a chosen one which I would be using for him. I tried to make sure that his characteristics conveyed a balding older male who takes his work very seriously as well as trying to keep it simple but lively.