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FINAL character turn around of my ‘Kittypillar’

I have really enjoyed this project and can say I have learnt a lot in a short amount of time. I did not know how to sculpt or use fur on blender and my ability to draw on photoshop as well as how to use grading maps was not strong at the start of the project. I am really satisfied with my final turnaround and looking at back at my aims from the start of the project ‘to capture realistic fur and the different variations of it on photoshop’ I feel I can say I have done so. I did struggle at first with some of the blender sculpting but I played to my strength when it came to photoshopping my design. I am really happy with the final outcome. 

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Concept art / turnaround for colour reference and blender sculpt

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Some final rendered angles of my ‘Kittypillar’ character model on blender 

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I took inspiration from Marilyn Monroes beauty spot placement and looked at the character ‘Edna’ from The Incredibles for reference of her holding a cigarette. 

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I added blue tones to the mohawk to differentiate it from the back spikes and hair and also to give the impression of her dying some of her hair herself. I wanted this ti be really subtle. 

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For the vape smoke I started with a basic drawn white line which I then used the liquify tool to distort and sway before then using the smudge tool to diffuse and flick the end of. 

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For building up the iris’s I used multiple layers and used the eraser with a low opacity to slightly blend the edges of the colours and then went in with more detail using the brush tool. I found colouring the white of the eyes slightly grey and then drawing in crisp white reflections helped to bring the eyes to life and give them a more realistic look.

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I spoke to Hannah today about using the gradient map on the whole of my character in order to give an overall all green tint to my model. The before and after of this shows just how effective using the map was. This is a setting I have used before I am glad I learnt how to as I would have otherwise drawn in all the different green tones manually. 

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Here are the different steps I used to build up the fur of the cats tail.

I used different brush thicknesses for the different types of hair, for example, the whiskers are a lot thicker than the cat hair so I used 3px on the hard round pressure brush where as for the cat fur I used 1px and then went in and added thicker strands after.

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My aim whilst drawing in photoshop was to really try to capture the different types of hair on my character - the cat tail, the back spikes, the mohawk, the thicker whiskers and the eye lashes. I referred back to my texture moodpboard to look at the different strands of hairs that you'd find in a cats tail and tried to mimic this in photoshop. Using multiple layers and colours and then finishing with some thicker and thinner strands and white hairs was how I went about achieving this look. 

I came up with techniques in photoshop that worked for me and that I found visually the most effective.

For the skin blotched I used the brush tool to draw out random blotches and then went in after with the eraser tool and a low opacity to diffuse some of the spot edges. I then used liquify to blend the pattern around the body and finally erased some of the inner pattern so that the intensity was highest on the back of the body. I did this technique with various colours and sized spots and highlights and I found it really worked.

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I added piercings and in the shading tab, simply decreased the roughness and increased the metallic settings to give a realistic shine to the metal. I then placed lights and a camera around the character and decided to render in evee. I wanted some shadow, but not too heavy and I wanted to explore drawing in shadow myself in photoshop. I’m pleased with my final renders which I will now put into photoshop and draw over, referring back to my colour palette I finalised earlier in the project. 

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Today I leaned how to create fur in blender. I also was taught how to create a path for the hair and where I want it to grow from. As there are lots of different densities of fur on my creature as well as lengths and thicknesses, this really helped me to differentiate between the different types of hair. By playing around with length and thickness and then styling the hair. I had trouble trying to make the cats tail around her neck smooth and flowing one way, after asking Molly I realised it was to do with the geometry of the shape I had sculpted for the tail - it was too complicated. So I deleted it and started again with a torus shape and deleted some vertices before stretching and scaling it to go around her neck. Then when I put fur on it, the effect was much more consistent with reflected cats fur much more accurately. I then styled the hair, brushing it one way to differentiate between the different types of hair on the body. I also styled her mohawk to make it look as if she had brushed it back. I am really pleased with what I leaned today in terms of placing hair, and am satisfied with the variation of hair I managed to capture.

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I modelled the hands and arms separately and aimed for them to have a boney, human-like, skeletal feel to them. I started with UV spheres and modelled each bone separately taking reference from the corpses bride hands. I then combined all the bones and decided to only have three fingers on each hand, reflecting the insect structure. I also wanted her to have gel nails on so I also sculpted them on and made the almond shape and spiky, almost claw / cat like.

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This is the second version with the modified body which I was more happy with as I was having difficulty in blender trying to expand some of the from sections of the body. I came to the conclusion that I could change and modify some of these parts in photoshop later on.

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I then placed the head onto the body I had sculpted from a circle. However I wasn't happy with the spring, almost paper like surface of the body. So I went and re sculpted parts of it to make it look more squishy and as if there were separate sections of it. 

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Today I started to sculpt the head of my character. I really struggled at first to sculpt the nose, as when I was happy with it from one angle, and tuned to a different view and it wasn't how I wanted it to look (top row). After talking to Paul and sculpting and how to treat the face a if it had planes as well as referring back to my referent images of a cats nose as well as Angelina Jolie bone structure I had a second try and remodelling the head. Through trial and error with how to use the brushes on blender, I eventually sculpted a head which I was really satisfied with (bottom row). From all angles the head looked feline-like and I managed to capture the botched, plastic surgery look I was aiming for with the over emphasised cheek bones, the high brow and the oversized bottom lip.

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Today I looked at colour palettes as well as taking swatches from caterpillar images. I wanted to test wether I wanted more realistic colours or go for a more vibrant palette. I have decided to go for palette 1 and combine the classic green of a caterpillar with a bold orange to contrast. This will be to reflect the punk nature of my character as well as hint to the idea of having a ginger cats tail around her neck as a boa. I also intend to give her some very subtle blue highlight in her mohawk again to suggest she has dyed it herself.