Software Used: Maya & Photoshop

Introduction:

There weren’t any sketches or concepts done in the process of creating this character, I simply wanted to create a cute, cartoonish bunny character. The only reference I had in mind at the time was of Bugs Bunny’s girlfriend from the movie, Space Jam, but I didn’t use any actual visual references in order to avoid copying that character. My first attempts were kind of strange. It wasn’t easy for me to make a bunny look sexy, funny and charming all at the same time, and instead I was getting a rather disturbing “thing”. So I played around with exaggerated proportions and focused more on the character’s face to try and achieve an appealing look.

Modelling:

The first step was to block the main proportions of the full body. Starting with a 2x2x2 cube, I performed a series of face extrusions, tweaking vertices to define the main front silhouette and profile (Fig.01).

Fig.01

Once I was happy with it, I started adding edge loops, cutting faces randomly and adding detail where needed. At this point it looked sort of creepy and there were a lot of 3- and 5-sided faces (Fig.02).

Fig.02

Due to my lack of care back then, and since its main purpose was for a still image, I left all the faces that way, but when I smoothed all the problems showed themselves (Fig.03).

Fig.03

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About two long years later, I opened my old files to finish them once and for all (most 3D artists will know what I’m talking about). Then I started to clean most of the polygon flow, deleting faces, adding new ones, and optimizing the topology to create the clothes from this mesh by selecting the matching faces and duplicating them from the model. This is a well known method I use to dress most of the cartoon characters I create (Fig.04 & Fig.05).

Fig.04

Fig.05

The hair was made by drawing NURBS curves and extruding planes along them; the eyes are NURBS spheres converted to polys (Fig.06).

Fig.06

UVs & Texturing:

I unwrapped the model, trying to keep the seams away from the view. I unwrapped the legs, arms, hands, feet, head, torso and ears separately, and once all of them were unfolded I sewed all the parts together, except for the ears. The result was a nicely unfolded mesh in one single UV shell (Fig.07).

Fig.07

The clothes and other body parts, such as eyes, teeth and tongue, were also unfolded in the same way (Fig.08).

Fig.08

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