3 Minute Short Film - Modelling - Bear

3 Minute Short Film

Modelling

-Bear

Modelling the bear was a different experience. I had created a character design for it which was not like a usual bear. The design was based on flat and cubical head shape but the body was similar to a normal bear. I looked at images of bears standing on there hind legs as i wanted my character to keep standing all the time.

 

(Reference images)

I started modelling with a trial version which looked promising but the edge flows were not looking good. So, after a while i restarted again making it similar to humanoid character. For reference I kept looking at my own body and some more images of bears  and mixing them up to finish the character. For the eyes i used a simple sphere polygon and modelled it into a oblonged oval shape looking like Disney style eyes(like mickey mouse). For the nose i used a reference of a bear face modelled exactly same and then modified it to fit the character. The most hard part of modelling was the palms . I looked at bear hands and i dint feel they were economic on the time i had to work to be done. Later i found a bear toy with simple palms from which i copied it to my model and that finished  modelling.

Reference Images

Images of development

(test1)

Before texturing, I uv mapped the character by cutting seams at back, under the arms and inbetween the legs. It was a quick task on this character. The color was a simple dark brown colour for the body as i was looking to get a hand made kinda feel to the characters. I had a chance of looking at some hand made puppets by Lynda McCarthy and a few other models before, so I tried making some texture using mudbox but i could not get what I wanted. I took out my camera and took some pictuers of the table, walls and a cushion to get some texture maps. I used the table texture which was wooden and playing with it, the character got a wooden finish which similar to what i was going for.

Images

Textures




UV Map.

I rigged the bear character after rigging some other characters first. So i had i idea and wanted the bear to be similar to a humanoid. The only difficulty was the Shoulder region as I dint get what i was looking for. I wanted that, when the bear put his hands down there would be a perfect curve from head to palm but i tried changing the weights a lot but couldn't get it done so i settled with the closest i could get. Also i couldn't use a ik rig on the hands as the jointsnin the hands were not straight and at different heights. In the eyes I used blend shapes to create a blink by scaling the eyes done on the y axis which was perfect and for the nose I created a nose twitch just for fun.

I also 3D printed the bear model to display it in the degree show.