Modeling

I had a pretty slow start with modelling cos I found it quite hard to understand so I did a lot of tutorials and work at home and I eventually got there. 

The first thing I started modelling was the apple on my character, Pommie's head. I started with the basic shape and then worked into it using the edge loop tool and your standard resizing and moving tools (W,R). 

As you can see from the image below, I used a reference picture to help me sculpt the apple shape. I was surprised at how far from spherical an apple actually is. You can also see from the images that i've experimented with the number of divisions around the apple, the more there is the more round and smooth it looks but with the smoothing feature handy there isn't really need for it. I just thought it looks better with more.

To finish the apple off I just added a hypershade using the blinn because it's nice and shiny and of course a nice deep red colour. 

 Now for the body. As you can see here, I've just imported the apple I made into a new project and started modelling the rest of his body. The eyes and the body were quite simple to do because I learned pretty much everything I needed to use by creating the apple first, which was the intention after noticing I was struggling to pick up the basics of modelling.

For the body and the eyes, I needed to get around how to do UV mapping. I first saved a JPEG image of the nets for each body shape. Because they're all sphere's it wasn't too complicated. I then moved onto creating an image in Photoshop which I would then put back into Maya, assign to a new hypershade. I used Lambert for all the body parts. And as you can see if you compare the images above, I changed the number of times this pattern is repeated to get a nice even amount of spots in reference to my model.

I found it pretty hard to model the eyes funnily enough. Even though I drew circles for the pupils, every time I applied it to my model the image I drew would stretch across and his eyes ended up being oval shaped instead of circular. It doesn't look so bad for the 'happy eyes' of course cos they're arc shapes anyway. Knowing this, I then tried using a vertical oval thinking it would stretch out into a circle. No. It didn't work. So in the end I managed to get it where it wasn't so noticeable and looked half decent.

This is my finished model. I'm really happy with how it turned out because it looks strikingly similar to the model and of course, I couldn't really ask for anything more.

The apple is actually my favourite part of my character's model because it kinda symbolises my turning point and I also put a lot of time and effort into making it despite it's such a small part of the model as a whole.