This tutorial will cover the back and the arm of my character. As there is no reference at all for the back area I'm using my knowledge of anatomy and my previous experiences with making the back of humans in order to make the contours. If need be you could make another sketch for the back to have something to work off.
By using the contours at the top of the rear leg you can shift / move them two polys up, then delete the middle set (so as to seperate the element again. From here you can shift move them and continue creting the back from the base of what you have already created. Here is the back area filled out.
The arm socket area is generally quite tricky to get right in practice. When you have to take into consideration the animatable properties of joints, you have to note how the vertices will be efffected. Even the poly layout has to be considered as you do not want to have polys jutting out and looking bad. As each square is made up of two triangles...you have to consider how those triangles will deform once it is to move. It is difficult to see the effect until you actaully get to that part, but over time you can see where problems may arise and sort them out.
For this exercise I took no regard in how triangles are sorted...so if the problem arises, we can work through it.
Because it is a coat though, and not something closer to muscle tone, we can take it a little easier in regards to detail.
As you can see I have started the arm in sections. I know what the arm is to be (basically a cylinder) and I have the front of the shoulder area as a basis for the back (although it blends more into a flat area rather than a chest) and this is what I have made from those parts of information.
From here we can join the two in order to make sure it flexes well once we have added the skeleton.
A good thing to consider is the more an area needs to move, the more polys it will need. In this case the top of the shoulder and underneath the shoulder, to less an extent. As the top of the shoulder needs to flex over the when the arm is at it's side, you will need to blend the vertex assignments to make the transition work well.
What I have done here is a rough version, once again it will need to be refined once I move through the second, more refined version after the basics are made. (Once again this is just how I work, it's not gospel or anything)
3DTotal
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The arm is 'basically' a cylinder but with some extra polys around the elbow area for the bending. As the back of the arm will need to bend more then the front, there is more polys to go round.This will be better seen in action after we have rigged the character.
