An animation about family discord by Xiaoxuan Zhao
13 Nov 2021 - 8 Dec 2021
Character modeling
I modeled each character in MAYA, then finished UV mapping, texturing, rigging and rendering in Blender.
I set the front and side views of the character turnaround sheet as Image Plane as a reference for modeling. In the modeling process, I mainly referred to Sean's Bobblehead Modelling tutorial and the body and face topology images.
Image Plane
Sean's Bobblehead Modelling tutorial
Body topology
Face topology
As my character is based on a cartoonish lop rabbit, I have made some adjustments based on the tutorial:
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Extruded face near the top of the head for the ears and have separate joints
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The facial features are in the lower middle of the face to make the character look more adorable
The position of the ears and the facial features
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The rabbit characters have only thumbs and palms and long paws with no toes
Hand and foot of Little rabbit
Hand and foot of Papa rabbit
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The round tail of a rabbit
Rabbit tail
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Different heights and head to body ratios to indicate the age
All characters
Turntable video for all characters
30 Jan 2022 - 23 Feb 2022
UV and texturing
I followed Sean's tutorial and reference images to mark the Seam, then draw the textures in Procreate to get a hand-drawn look.
At first, the ears had more brown areas and I marked the Seam where the colour changed. But I found it difficult to align the two parts. So I tried to increase the pink area inside the ear and mark the Seam in the middle of the pink area, which worked better on the model.
I changed the little rabbit's tail to brown as well to give it a coordinated look.
Mark Seam 1st version
Colour misaligned
Mark Seam 2nd version
Little rabbit texture 1st version
Little rabbit texture 2nd version
Papa rabbit texture
Little girl head and body texture
Mama rabbit texture
Little girl dress texture
Feedback and improvement
16 Feb 2022
Based on Chris and Stephen's feedback, I added more wireframes to the model using Subdivision in Blender for rigging.
2 Mar 2022
Based on Susan's feedback, I made the forehead less prominent as it would create shadows on the face. I also deepened the colour of the blush.
Shadow on face
Forehead before
Forehead after
10 Feb 2022 - 10 Mar 2022
Currently, I made the contour lines by marking freestyle edges and marking freestyle faces to exclude excess edge lines. But I found that when the camera moves to other angles the marked edges are blocked by the marked freestyle faces, so I am also considering using the topology, texture or GreasePencil for nose and mouth.
Excess edge lines
Exclude excess edge lines
30 May 2022 - 5 Jun 2022
I added more topology to the arms and legs of the character models for the rigging process.
Original model
More topology
I added more topology to the arms and legs of the character models for the rigging process.
13 Jun 2022 - 19 Jun 2022
When putting the character into the scene for testing, I found that at some angles the marked Freestyle faces would block contour lines of the nose and mouth. So I decided to remove the rabbit character's nose and mouth and use textures instead for the facial expressions.
Shader note