Project 1, Pt 2 – Gashapon Modelling

Update:

My team member for this project has left the Melbourne campus, and as such I currently have no work partner. I’m unsure as to how this will affect the workload at the moment, but hopefully it’s not a huge bump in the road. I’ll need to catch up with my facilitator tomorrow to discuss where to go from here.

Colour Redesign:

Cthulhu

Quetzalcoatl

After discovering we were able to utilise 5 colours per Gashapon in addition to the base plastic colour, I updated the colour palette for my two colours, adding a few additional colours to each. I also added some basic textures in order to give the characters more appeal and interest to their designs. Only minor adjustments were made so as to keep the minimalistic qualities that had received positive feedback when I presented my concept work.

Modelling:

Firstly, I had to finish detailing the wings so that they would retain their shape when smoothed out. With the rough models of my two characters done, I then began working on blending the features into the main bodies of the Gashapons. It was relatively simple to add the arms after a few additional edge loops were added to the chest. This also made it easy to blend the wings into the back of the models

Blending in the neck was difficult to start, as I was struggling to figure out how best to merge the neck with each of the heads. The head of the Quetzalcoatl is more like a square, while Cthulhu’s head is more like an oval. After a fair amount of trial and error, I was able to attach both heads using the same technique. I created a patch that connects the polygons which almost resembles petals on a flower, with the neck being the stem.

From here, I had to attach the tentacles of Cthulhu to its face. As the previous technique worked well with attaching the head to the neck, I was able to successfully repeat the process on a slightly wider scale. This did require a few more edge loops to connect all the vertices on the tentacles, but it didn’t compromise the topology of the model.

Attaching the feathers to the head of the Quetzalcoatl was more challenging as I was trying my best to adhere to my original model sheet. It became apparent after a lot of struggle and difficulty, I stopped trying to make the feathers fit the model sheet. Instead, I bevelled the edges of the back of the head, attaching the feathers on the slight angles this produced. Personally, I think it looks just as good this way. Although I’m completely satisfied with the area where the feathers meet the head just yet, I feel this could be resolved with texturing and bump maps.

Texturing:

Unfortunately, when I finally came to the UV unwrap stage, my computer kept crashing when I tried to open the UV Texture Editor. I tried to resolve the issue using help forums and Youtube tutorials, but they didn’t resolve the issue. As I’m unable to head onto campus tonight, I’ll have to catch up quickly tomorrow. Thankfully my topology and texture design isn’t too complex, which should allow the process to be fairly straightforward.

Project 1, Pt 1 – Gashapon Design

A new trimester has begun, and we’re getting stuck into business! Our first project has us designing and producing 3D models for a set of ‘Gashapon’ characters, a range of collectible capsule toys. The projects has a few elements to it, so we’re working in pairs to get the work done. My teammate and I have agreed to split the work evenly, with each of us designing and producing two characters each. With that said, my partner is less experienced in Autodesk Maya, and as such, I’m on hand to help out and pull a little more of the weight in the 3D Modelling should that be required.

Body Shape:

Our initial research had us looking at the body shapes of existing capsule toys, drawing the conclusion that many have a very simplistic design. This means a lot of detail can be expressed through painted textures, with distinguishing features, such as accessories and clothing, to be modelled on top of the body shape. This would help the product to appeal to children as well as adults, keeping the target audience demographic wide and would also mean the production process of these toys could be relatively simple. Of the designs produced by my partner and I, my body design was chosen for it’s cute and basic features which can be easily modified for each Gashapon character.

Themes:

During our planning process, we brainstormed a list of potential themes for our Gashapons, keeping in mind that we wanted our theme to stand out from our classmates. We produced some concepts for a few different themes, settling with monsters, but then hearing that another team was already producing Halloween-themed Gashapons. As a result, we pushed our theme towards myths and legends, allowing us to explore a wider range of creatures and monsters. We decided to have two male and two female Gashapons for the sake of equality, helping us to choose our four mythological characters, with me choosing Cthulhu and a Quetzalcoatl, and him choosing Medusa and a Mermaid.

Colours:

With our character concept designs decided upon, we had to decide on the character colours. As the brief states we can only use 5 paint colours in addition to the basse colour of the plastic, we struggled to find a colour palette. We initally wanted two types of aqua, one being  the base colour and the second being darker for adding textures to the base, but had to compromise with the addition of purple for the sake of the mermaid Gashapon. We were able to juggle the colours around to get our final colour pallete, drawing inspiration from the basic colour design of Lego products.

Model Sheets

Cthulhu

Quetzalcoatl

Mermaid

Medusa

Modelling

At this stage, I was ahead of my partner and started to model my two characters, getting  an idea of how our topology  would work. Thankfully our simple design meant that there were few complexities and the models could be produced with relative ease.

Cthulhu

Quetzalcoatl

Ball Bounce Playblast