Making Of 'Ivan & Bonnie'

Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is William Vaughan; I'm currently living in Orlando, Florida - the home of Mickey Mouse! I recently created two new characters that I like to call "Ivan" and "Bonnie", and I thought we could take a look at how I went about bringing them to life. Ivan was greatly influenced by the work of Mark Behm and I created him as a way to learn a new piece of software. Total creation time was one day and I'm excited to be sharing with you the steps I took to get to the final image!

Bonnie is a character I created for the opportunity to explore character design. I wanted to create a female character that wasn't skin and bones, like most CG women. She was created the day after I created Ivan using very similar techniques and setup, so I thought we'd put our focus on Ivan and look into some of his details.

Let's get started!

Modelling

This was to be my first real project created in Modo, so I tackled my favourite type of subject - character creation! I prefer to use the box-modelling method for organic modelling, so I started with a simple box and added localised detail where needed. For me box-modelling feels more like traditional sculpting than something like the "build-out" method. Ivan is made up of all four point polygons, which I find a must when working with anything that will need to deform properly during animation and posing (Fig.01).

Fig. 001

Fig. 01

To create the hair and eyebrows, I used simple pieces of geometry clustered together, which I find works great for this style of character! It's exactly the same way I used to create hair when I worked with traditional clay. This doesn't work for all characters but it definitely seemed to fit Ivan (Fig.02).

Fig. 002

Fig. 02

Posing

Since Modo is primarily a modelling program and lacks any rigging tools, I chose to model the character into a pose. An amazing tool that helped to make light work of this was the Flex tool. I was able to pose Ivan within a 10-minute time period with very little tweaking needed. It's a must-have tool, in my opinion, if you plan on posing without a rig (Fig.03)!

Fig. 003

Fig. 03

Lighting

I used two Area lights to light the scene. They are by far my favourite type of light to work with as they produce beautiful, soft shadows. For my Key light I went with a nice, warm value, and used a cool value for my Fill light. I'm a big fan of this type of lighting as it makes for nice contrast! I also used Modo's Global Illumination with 4 Indirect Bounces (Fig.04).

Fig. 004

Fig. 04

Texturing

I wanted to keep the texturing on the character to a minimum and so took advantage of the Sub Surface Scattering tools in Modo. They are extremely easy to work with and deliver amazing results quickly! I tweaked the attributes until I got the look I was going for (Fig.05 - 06).

Fig. 005

Fig. 05

Fig. 006

Fig. 06

Compositing

I was extremely happy with the final render but thought I could add some interest with a bit of compositing in Photoshop. I used a scan of a negative from my very first roll of film that I destroyed during a college photography class. I didn't have the heart to throw it away and over ten years later I'm glad I didn't. I think it made for a perfect framework for my new character (Fig.07)!

Fig. 007

Fig. 07

The following day I created Bonnie using the same methods used for Ivan, and really focused on trying to create a unique female character that showed as much personality as possible, without being "in your face" (Fig.08).

Fig. 009

Fig. 09



Sometimes it's important to explore different styles and stray from the norm!

Final Image

Final Thoughts

I hope you have enjoyed this insider look at the creation of Ivan and Bonnie. Thanks to 3DTotal for the opportunity to share this with you on this amazing site!

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