First of this week I got back into 3DS Max and started to work on Olive a bit more. I started by fixing her hair, as I mentioned last week I was unhappy with the pointy fringe I made so I went back and made it more square. I also started to model Olive's body this week starting with a basic drawing I did earlier in the project as ref.
Olive's little potato body ref.
I started to have trouble getting the block out of the body to look in proportion to her head; so I decided to look at some reference illustrations that had achieved that I wanted.
I then took this into 3D and started to refine the shape abit. moving her ears down, filling her cheeks out more and fixing the body.
After I felt like it was getting in the right direction I asked Ben (Hazrat's mentor) for some feedback. He sent me over a photoshop document with a paint over and sent me a list of things he thought could be changed and things he liked.
TLDR version of what he said:
Keep the scarf over the face as it's a massive read of character and would be a shame to lose it.
Keep the S shapes that you have in the concept and try and get them working in 3D as it makes a more dynamic shape.
The little wellies are a great contrast to her body and head.
Make the bunches have more volume like the concept.
She has a lot of character and if it is made in 3D well then it should work.
The concept has refraction in the glasses so I need to decide whether to make a shader for the glasses glass to magnify her eyes or model them big and have a normal glass texture on the glasses.
After getting Ben's feedback I worked on the model more to what he asked and It is looking a load better. I also started looking at this: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:637902/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Which basically explains how to get a good silhouette and character read. It spoke about the rule of thirds; I already have this in my model as her head is a circle, body a triangle and legs a square. However it also spoke about how symmetry makes for an uninteresting character so I am definitely going to try and make her as subtly asymmetrical as possible.
I also asked Craig for some feedback on the model and he suggested this:
She's too thin
Add more shape to her body
Possibly have a half on jumper for asymmetry
Her hair is fine
Play with placement of glasses for more character
Here is a quick paint over with some notes showing what I plan to do to her next.