[FINAL, FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #7 (Apr 11, 2018): Thanks to those of you who have responded to the Questionnaire. The feedback is extremely helpful. If you haven't responded yet and you participated in the class - or even if you didn't participate - please fill that out and I will gift you 20 Breath of the Wild screenshots from my Switch.
[FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #6 (Apr 9, 2018): We've reached the end of the homework extension period and this class officially comes to end. What a month! It's been a thrill to see each of you forge your characters, learn new things, share tips with each other, and offer critiques along the way.
This thread will be open indefinitely but it's officially at the end of it's "class lifespan" meaning I won't be able to commit weekly time to it anymore and I will unpin it from the forum topics list. I'll pop in occasionally if I see activity but you all are more than welcome to keep working on their characters here if you wish!
UPDATE: Closing post on page 44 and XP has been added to each participating account.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #5 (Mar 28, 2018): Week 4's stream is archived and available via the Past Events button on the Live Event page. Also a reminder that I'm extending the 'deadline' of this month and will be keeping this thread alive through the end of the first week in April. Hopefully that gives you all a bit more time to get your characters done!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #4 (Mar 26, 2018): Week 3, done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. I'm quite impressed by the neutralization and retoplogy work I've seen. It's a lot of work and I can see that effort in the WIPs and especially completed submissions.
Week 4 - the final week - dives into adding color to our model, primarily in the form of creating textures. Check out this week's breakdown a little further down in this description and see you tomorrow at the Live Event!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #3 (Mar 19, 2018): Week 2 is accomplished and I'm finally caught up on submissions! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. We have some impressive character concept sculpts underway. In fact, I have yet to bestow a grade lower than an A this week.
Week 3 continues our 3-week character building production. Specifically we're going to look at pursuing an animation friendly version of our character - both how and why we would do this. See you tomorrow at the Live Event! Don't forget to RSVP.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #2 (Mar 12, 2018): Week 1 is done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. It's been a lot of fun seeing your caricature work and concept art choices.
Week 2 begins the 3-week process of building a character based on the concepts we choose. Don't forget to RSVP to the Live Event tomorrow - See you then!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #1 (Mar 5, 2018): Class is in session! Today officially begins the BC2-1803 class. Please check the syllabus below for Week 1's focus and assignments. Begin watching the pre-recorded courses if you haven't already and begin looking for a cool, stylized character design for creating in 3D this month. The first Live Event is tomorrow at 2pm EST - SEE YOU THERE! 😎
Welcome to the CGCookie Class: Creating Stylized Characters with Blender! This class is designed to teach you everything you need to know about building stylized 3D characters. If you’re diligent in watching all content and hitting homework deadlines, by the end you will have a modeled and textured stylized character! It’s an intermediate-to-advanced class which means you’ll do best by having some experience with Blender and 3D modeling before committing to this class.
This is the second "Class" format where Citizen members are invited to focus together on a particular topic/skill for a month. Participation looks like this:
WHEN? The class will take place from March 5th through March 31st
Abstract: Stylization is any deviation from realism. Thus it’s a broad spectrum from slight liberty away from reality to extreme abstraction of reality. This week we're going to sift through various examples of stylized characters, noting their qualities, and categorizing a spectrum of stylization.
Goal of the Week: Train your eye and mind to stylize your perception. Practice simplifying and exaggerating reality. Loosen up your sculpting approach (gestural sculpting).
Pre-recorded course to watch: Art of Sculpting: Caricature Chapter
Week 1 Live Event (Already happened and archived!)
Homework:
Abstract: Story plays a big part in stylization. Not necessarily ‘narrative’ but background, personality, and purpose. The success of a character is strengthened by its developmental arc. The best artists create characters that are more than the sum of its pixels; more than the sum of its brush strokes and polygons; more than its final render.
Goal of the Week: Develop a story for your character; one that can fuel your creative workflow for the rest of the month. Then channel that story into the first stage of sculpting.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 2 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: At this point a decision needs to be made about our character sculptures: A) Leave it as a sculpture or B) optimize it for ‘production’. Leaving it as a sculpture means it’s a static sculpture that can be painted, rendered, or 3D printed but not animated. Optimizing it for production means you turn your sculpture into a model that’s easiest to work with up to and including animation. If you opt for optimization, this week is mostly a technical and problem-solving task. We need to both retopologize our mesh and also neutralize it if the sculpt is posed.
Goal of the Week: Understand the concept of “production-friendly” and practice retopology.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 3 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: Like Dorothy, our characters have so far lived in a black and white world. This week we’re leaving Kansas and adding color. There’s many methods for creating our character texture(s) including hand-painting, baking maps that accent the painting process (great for the less painterly character artists), as well as photo-sourcing. There's also a couple different formats: Vertex Colors and UV/Textures.
Goal of the Week: Get comfortable with painting textures.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 4 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
This thread is reserved for CG Cookie Citizens that are participating in the "Creating Stylized Characters with Blender" class. Its purpose is to serve as central communication for all participating Citizens (excluding Hobby plan Citizens) to ask me and each other questions and to post homework. As the instructor of the class, I will be monitoring this thread on a daily basis (especially Mon-Thurs) throughout the month of March to review homework and answer questions.
Free members are welcome to observe the thread but please respect that communication is reserved for Citizens.
Homework Assignment Week 3
Maybe on the Earth there is some time zone where there is still Sunday, my time management totally failed this week.. The biggest mistake was not completing the orb exercise in advance, it took much more time than thought and still being only at the half.
But there is no excuse has to do like in a real school - posting which having :-)
The little giraffe is neutralized but did not have chance to retopology:
Homework Submission - Week 3
Man, this was hard stuff. Not the actual retopology work itself, but everything ephemeral to it - I kept making mistakes and having to start over. Once halfway through retopo I realized that I had joined all the parts of my model together but didn't boolean them together, and it was causing weird issues with the shrinkwrap modifier in combination with the subsurf; it seemed like in some spots it wanted to shrinkwrap to the internal geometry for some reason. I was able to copy my retopo object to the clipboard and paste it into a much earlier save from right before I joined everything together, and start again from there. It took a lot of patience, especially with the Boolean modifier in making sure it didn't leave any internal geometry - I had to try a few different "orders" of combining parts before I finally got a solid model. But, things were learned.
Going with Kent's advice I "took in" the pants a little so they weren't so baggy. I took a tiny bit of mass from the jacket too but very little - I wanted that to look a little puffy, it is a jacket after all. I also did some polish on the face and especially the shoes before I started the retopo (the shoes were awful in my Week 2 sculpt).
So here he is:
The jacket and the hat are separate pieces from the rest of the character. When looking from a distance, the wireframe from the character's arms visually "bleeds through" the jacket wireframe in some places - I've tried a few things but I can't seem to prevent that if I want to stay zoomed out far enough to get the entire character in the viewport (the effect goes away when you zoom closer). Just take my word for it that it's a visual artifact I suppose.
And of course my RoboOrb, from back when I first submitted it as an exercise for the Retopology course:
I'm really brand new to sculpting also. Really new - my whole sculpting portfolio is Melvin, twice, and then the models I've posted in this thread. I have a feeling these exercises would be a lot easier if I'd had some more sculpting practice before now and the learning definitely has a curve to it, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. From the looks of it so far, so are you!
Homework Submission Week 3 part b
Ulbricht took the week off while I was doing my taxes. He wasn't available to be normalized and retopologized until Sunday afternoon. There was extensive restorative sculpting prior to the retopology. He is now retopologized.
I like retoplogy too, but too much of it and I'm sick of it too 😅
Overall your topology is solid. The eyes are unique shape to tackle..not sure myself what the best way is without more info on how they would move in animation. The mouth is the stain on the topology though. Perhaps you just ran out of time..
In general, this character could definitely be animated at this point 👍
Retopology is fun, it's kinda like a puzzle game in a way.
I completely agree! A puzzle game. I'm going to use that in the future to describe retopo to people.
Did you submit your exercise to the official page? Make sure you do if not - get some XP 🤓
Matthew is spot on: It's just a matter of selecting all your mesh faces and setting your shading to smooth.
Sculpting clothing is a big challenge. While tighter clothing is easiest to sculpt imo, long flowy clothing (capes, long jackets, long dresses, etc) can be easier to simulate. Take the concept sculpt I showed during last week's stream, I simulated the jacket coat-tail instead of sculpting (arms of the jacket were sculpted):
I also taught the simulation approach in the Realistic Character course.
But it looks like you're getting the hang of it. Practice absolutely makes perfect and each new sculpt will be better than the first, both in quality and workflow efficiency.
Rocking seam creasing, nice. Super clean lhumungus 👌 Did you submit to the official exercise page as well? Making sure you and others in the thread are getting that XP.
I like to think CGC classes are a little more relaxed than school. Excuses are more understandable here. Like when I admit that I didn't have enough time to finish retopology either....🙃
Your neutralization looks good and the orb retopo is well on it's way. There's a bit of edge sliding that could even the faces sizes out a bit better. Here's an image outlining where differing edge lengths could be evened:
Where the green edges are good and consistent, but the red aren't. Same for blue/yellow. It may seem small and insignificant, but especially since the orb is a round shape, roundness depends on evenness.
Still it's minor notes. Overall you're doing great 👍
Finally put together the Sketchfab (I wasn't quite happy with the hands topology and I ended up working on them longer than I expected). Also, for some reason, Sketchfab makes the shoes dark (the normals are correct in Blender) and messes up the area around the collar....
But, things were learned.
Hahaha love this quote! It could make a great CGC Class slogan: "Things were learned."
Really nice job this week jakeblended! For being new to sculpting, you're picking it up quick. The clothing feels much more fabric-ky at this point. And overall the toplogy is solid; it could definitely be animated. There's some inconsistency in facial size in areas:
But those are small notes for improvement. You've earned an A this week no doubt.
For Sunday afternoon, you've made some good progress. Given the level of detail you achieved in the sculpt, I don't doubt that your neutralization required some re-sculpting. Though that's not fun, it's common. Happened a little for me too.
Your topology is off to a great start as far as I can tell. You've got skillz so I know the finished version is going to be awesome!
Thanks for the encouraging words! I felt like I was back at art school again pulling an "all nighter" to get it this far. ☕️☕️
I agree with Kent on the retopo. When you're done adding a new section, go around and touch up the other areas because maybe the flow shifted in that time. Think round and evenly spaced. Check from all angles. Practice good topology now and it'll become second nature later. You got this.
@theluthier Thanks again for the encouragement and ending the Lollipop-head I had going on last week.
All critiques are welcome!
Bob's hair and pajama pants didn't get a lot of love this week; most of my time went into futzing with the robe, accessories, and other miscellaneous touch-ups.
Hey guys. First of all just wanted to say everyone's been posting some AWESOME work here!
Unfortunately this is the post I didn't want to write, but these weeks for me have been ridiculously life-crowded and I fell way far behind in the class schedule. I will still be watching the live-streams/recordings and applying the techniques on my own, but I'm way too far back to meet the submission deadlines and all.
As my goal was to take this course seriously, I feel it's only right to explain that I didn't just run off/give up/disappear. A big thanks again, to Kent and friends, for guiding me through the caricature stage. The lessons learned here will find their way into my gallery page soon enough. :)
--Sincerely,
Kyle
