Modelling our first character

So modelling has begun on our character and I have started with Gloria first (our main character). Lija has been doing research into proportions and other attributes to help refine Gloria, which can be found HERE. Along with this she gave me the t-pose which I turned into image planes to model from within Maya. There were different iterations of Gloria, mainly with and without the coat, this was really helpful as I was able to just concentrate on blocking out her main body first and then change the image planes to add in the coat afterwards - found HERE. Throughout the concept art stage and creating the t-poses Lija would constantly get feedback from me to make sure it was looking okay and if any adjusments needed to be changed. This worked out really well as I could advise her on what I would be able to model and if anything may have been too complicated for myself to make.

Throughout the whole process I have tried to keep the mesh simple and the topology clean, whilst keeping the poly-count low. I probably spent the most time on her face as I didn't want her looking too realistic but I'm hoping the textures will emphasise this even more. To keep things simple her head and legs are not attached to another part of the body, they are simply placed within the clothing. When it comes to rigging and binding it will all hold together, I will just have to weight paint it in a particular way in order for her waist not to show through the coat when she moves.

The bottom of the coat was a bit of problem solving for myself as when it is rigged it will have dynamic curve which will create a more fluid motion that we can easily animate. Because it will be moving I had to create it so it would be able to move about so down the middle at the front, the coat is not joined. Also with it going into Unity afterwards I have to remember about backface culling - if the normals are not reversed one side will not show up. I duplicated the outside of the coat and reversed to normals to get around this issue, so hopefully all will be fine in Unity.

I spent awhile on her shoes too, it probably wasn't necessary as the viewer might not even see them that well but it just adds to the extra detail. I extruded certain parts and merged the vertices to create 'laces' of some sort. They aren't perfect and there might even be an easier / better way to create them but it's what I was able to come up with.

The next stage is to model her hat, this is another separate geometry, however will not be attached through the rig as we need it to fall off at certain points. I don't think it will need rigging in anyway as it may just complicate things. After this I will get on to unwrapping her so I can pass the UV map onto Lija to texture. Whilst she is doing this I might go onto rigging her or move on to modelling our second character.