Now the pretty part of the workflow is over, we've entered the technical art. They don't look pretty again until we get to texturing (which I'm excited for because that means we get to paint them!)
This section is probably the most time consuming part, as there is a lot that has to happen so they can animate! It's also a different type of workflow, less creative and more logic now. In a big film studio like Disney, this section of the workflow might be done by a different department than the artists who did the character sculpts, then another department would later rig them, and another to animate them, another to render them, etc.
I tried counting how many hours it took to trace out the grids over their bodies but I lost count after 20 hours, and I've done a couple more evenings since then! But they are both ready now, and I was lucky enough to listen to Taylor's discography a couple times over while I worked haha 🌈 Gotta get her that grammy!
Now we're up to the UVs - so think of a chocolate bunny for example - a 3D shape wrapped in coloured foil to look like fur and eyes etc - but when you unwrap it, it's just a lump of chocolate and all the colours were printed on a flat sheet of foil and wrapped around. That's how we paint assets in 3d - So I map out these meshes and guide the computer on where it would cut and unfold so it knows how to wrap over when we project on the detail and colours. See in the 2nd picture, next to Pepa are her UVs - those white outlines of shapes.
If you look at the 3rd pic - See the black and white checkers over Pepa's dress? That's how I know the mesh will receive it's texture correctly. If the squares are all twisted then the UVs arent good and I need to cut and arrange them in a better way so that they will be straight (See the cursed 4th pic for an example of bad UVs hehe - If I tried to paint her with those, the paint would stretch and warp, just like the checkers are doing)
I'm still going on this step and it'll take a few more hours, but once it's over we get to paint them 😉💛
After completing its UVs, I'll paint a rough texture to plan the dragon's seams. It's a TY Beanie Boos plushie and I want to replicate the look as closely as possible.
This was a fun little project from 2020. Here’s Joker from Persona 5 as a Lego Minifigure. Because I know Lego will never make any Persona 5 sets. I made the decorations/prints in Photoshop and applied the texture in Mecabricks. An in-browser digital 3D Lego Building program.
3D Model: https://www.mecabricks.com/en/models/mLvzkw14aAw
Look. I’m unnaturally excited about this. I learned that owls fluoresce so I had to know: Do chickens? Google wasn’t helpful. But I have all the things I need for this experiment.
Please please please if you get photos or video of your chickens under a black light tag me or this post! I WANNA SEE!!!