Hello, my name is Marcos Nicacio and I'll show you the process I used to produce this cartoon character, Captain Mosquito.

References and Concept

When I was invited by 3DTotal to produce this tutorial, they offered me the chance to make a cartoon character with some individual characteristics, in this case a mosquito. I thought it would be cool to make him like those old style pilots with traditional hats, big chins and a friendly smile on his face.

I looked for references of old pilots and their clothing as well as flies and mosquitos, including cartoon characters like those in the bar scene of the movie A Bug's Life. I'm not great at drawing, but I'm working on it. For this concept I asked a great friend of mine called Roberto Moreira to draw a concept based on the references I found. This concept helped me a lot. Fig.01 shows the concept that is based on my references.

Modeling

I always start by modeling the head and depending on the circumstances I use poly by poly or box modeling. In this case I used poly by poly modeling to have total control of the edge looping on his face. After I finished the head I selected the border of the neck region and extruded down. To do this press Shift + hold the left button and drag in the direction you want to extrude (Fig.02).