3D/Animation Training : Week 6, 7 & 8

For the last 3 weeks of the training, which is Week 6, 7 & 8, we have to do our final assignment which is character modeling. This assignment is the hardest of all yet very, very exciting. Funny isn't it, I hate modeling vehicle but I enjoyed modeling human. XP For the last illustration classes, we have to draw out our final character & weapon. I chose the Lady Reaper design since she already has a weapon. Before we start drawing the final work, we're taught to draw human pose so that your character doesn't look stiff. It wasn't easy I tell ya. Cuz you need to know your body proportion & muscle movement very well, otherwise it look distorted:

Some dummy poses. It's so hard to draw them. >.<

I always wanted to do a dark female character. That's why I chose the Lady Reaper. Her name is 'Synn Purify'. 'Synn' is a latin word for 'Sin'. And she's an Angel Reaper. Her duty is to hunt down angels who defy God orders or break the Heaven's rules. Take note that she only takes order from God himself & no one else. I wanted to represent her as a cold-hearted & emotionless person. The tattoos/markings on her are actually summon symbols. She can summon creatures from the underworld, but that's only if she needs backup. She also wields a giant scythe called 'Gressil'. It's actually a demon scythe where it converse with her through telepathy. Its eyes can detect any fallen angel who disguise themselves on Earth. Gressil feeds upon souls & apparently angel souls are it's favourite.

My final character design, Synn Purify, the Angel Reaper.

Her weapon, Gressil (scythe).

Before I could start modeling my character in 3Ds Max I needed to do a blue print first. I need to design front, side & 3/4 view of the character head & body:


When it finally came to the modeling part... wow... it was Super Stress! The head & body (including costume) took about 10 days to finish it. There are sooo many tutorials that I hv to refer cuz whatever the trainer taught wasn't enough. The hardest part to model was the face, it took me 3 tries until I got it right. The UVW mapping was damn hard to learn at first, but once you got it, it was easy. However, I think I still need to learn more about texturing. Nonetheless I love the result at the end. I used normal baseline lightracer rendering.

I did a T-pose so that it's easier to model her costume & to rig.

Alright, this was totally an accident. I never expect her to look like a female version of 'Cloud' from FF7 when I decided to hv her hair blonde & blue eyes. I wanted her to look like a typical angel herself (to represent god servant) but with black clothes. Sadly... it turns out sometimes very unexpected. WTF! So in the end I totally change her entire hair & eyes colour into more of a gothic vampire look.

From the looks of it, I'll blame the costume first. Cuz it look soo much like Cloud's from FF7AC. Shit!

This is her new look & I love it! Her expression was exactly how I wanted. XDDD

Thanks to my super high poly, which is more than 3 hundred thousand polys, I cannot do any animation for it, only turn table. The rigging part was a pure headache. I hv to redo some of the body parts cuz it was totally distorted like shit after I rigged it.

I followed the pose exactly from my final character design.

After looking at my finished work, I felt like I needed to do another one cuz Synn looks kinda lonely somehow. So I decided to create her younger twin sister, 'Synn Chastity'. She's different from her older twin in terms of emotion. She tends to sympathize with her target before she kills them. Just like her sister, she also wield the same giant scythe called 'Rosier'.


With both sisters modeled, I call them the 'Synn Sisters'. I combined both of them onto one turn table. For lighting, I used 3 spotlights and one skylight. When comes to the animation, I found that my file size was seriously too big until it hangs whenever I played it. It's way over 3GB just for a 6 seconds animation! So I had no choice but to learn a bit of Adobe After Effect. Now my file has decrease to 300mb. Sigh... I know, I know, it's still kinda big. ><

Clay Model of my Synn Sisters in different views

My final assignment of the training course. It's finally done! YAY!

Now that the individual assignments are done, it's time for group assignment. We're given one month to create a short 2-3 minutes animation. It's gonna be a challenging one cuz we're now going to work with other people. So shit can happen anytime among team members. However, for me, the animation must be delivered no matter what obstacle I faced.

"When There's A Will, There's A Way."