Week 1, 04/01.2016
In the first week I conducted my own research to get ideas for the character statue, as the first milestone consisted of a battle arena based on the theme Ancient Rome. This was the era where there would be battles amongst gladiators, therefore I wanted to create a character statue of a gladiator. The first piece of research was of a mood board of the environment and the next piece was another mood board of the clothing styles, armor and weapons that gladiators would typically wear.
Then I used the information I found and created a model sheet in Photoshop of the character statue by getting an image of a well built anatomy of a man, as gladiators are usually considered strong, as well as images of weapons, armor, head pieces and other types of clothing which I carefully cropped and placed on the anatomy image which I lined up to the best of my abilities to show what the character statue will be.
Week 2 - 3, 11/01/2016 - 18/01/2016
Once I had a clear idea of what I wanted the character statue to look like, I then went on to making the different body parts, starting with the head. I choose this body part first as I thought it would be tedious to make and so I wanted to have had time to work on it and if I wanted to change it throughout I could do so.
First I imported an image into Maya of a face I took from the internet. This would be a guideline for the head that I'd follow to create a 3D model of a male face for the character statue.
I started off with the eyes and mouth, creating a cylinder in which I'd transform into the shape around the eyes and the mouth, I then used the extrude tool to start creating the rest of the face, I followed the outer edge of the image to get the shape of the head just right, as this image was of a female face I had shaped the jaw and other small areas of the head to make it appear masculine.
Week 4, 25/01/2016
Secondly, I went onto modelling a hand, I only had to create one as I can duplicate it to make the other, this would save time and I can easily edit the hands after by adjusting the positioning of fingers or any part of the hand to give it a distinctive appearance so that it would not look exactly the same.
I imported a front, side and back image of a hand as a guideline, again it was female so I adjusted it to make the hand appear masculine. I started with the palm, creating a cube and adding edge loops and extruding. I then went onto creating one of the fingers, I only had to create one as I would be able to duplicate it to make the other three fingers and it would save a considerable amount of time. I followed the image to transform the finger and give it detail.
I went onto creating the finger tip, as this part of the finger is rounded I created a sphere which I then reduced the amount of loops and merged the vertices of the finger tip to the end of the finger. I then created the finger nail by selecting the face of the finger tip and extruding inwards to create a dent, I then used the bevel tool so that it gave a smooth edge.
The last part of the hand I needed to create was the thumb, to do this, I used a duplicate of the fingers, transformed it so it was smaller and thicker and followed the image to create a noticeable thumb by moving around the edges and vertices.
Week 5, 01/02/2016
This week i then created the feet. I added several shapes together to do this, I used my own feet as inspiration. I firstly created the main shape of the foot, creating and adding the toes one by one and then the ankle as it attaches to the leg. I found this harder than creating the hand.
Week 6 - 7, 08/02/2016 - 15/02/2016
Next, I moved on to create the torso, using images as a reference, I created a cylinder and reshaped it so it appeared thin at the side view as a torso is not round at all. I did not import an image as I found it was one of the easiest body parts to model. As I was creating a male gladiator, I did not have to worry too much about curves by of the muscles. I created pecks and abdominal muscles by adding edge loops and creating dents so that these muscles were seen clearly.
Once the torso was modelled I used the extrude tool to model out the arms, shoulders, neck, bottom, legs and chest. This was relatively easy to do as It was attached to the torso and I had to create a simple base for the rest of body. After this was done, I attached all body parts together by merging them.
I used the sculpt tool to finally add in some detail the whole body to give a realistic feel.
Afterwards, I started to design the clothing and equipment for the gladiator statue, I had done this by overlaying shapes over the already modelled character statue and used images as a guideline. This was relatively easy as the gladiator statue I am creating hasn't got much clothing or equipment on them, only a armoured skirt, a small circular head piece, sandals, and a weapon. I done this simple so that when in z brush I would add more detail.
Week 8 - 15, 22/02/2016 - 28/03/2016
I exported my gladiator statue into z brush where I could then uses different brushes to create a rock-like appearance and cracks to make the statue believable.
As I made my statue high poly in z brush I thought it would be better to essentially paint the statue instead of UV mapping it afterwards. I thought this would be better as statues in Ancient Rome were plain stone textures with a lot of detail, and so I wanted my statue to relate. I used z brush to mould my statue, for example the face as i left features out because I wanted to give my statue hair and a detailed face and i thought z brush was the best programme to do so. This was a very tedious task and took several weeks to get the look i wanted to achieve.
Week 14 4/04/2016
I used this week to create an animation during my battle arena seen. This was fire, this animated whilst on a barrel.
I also Incorporated more props into the scene of the battle arena to improve upon it, this included the sword used for the gladiator statue.
Week 15 11/04/2016
I used this time to ensure that my model was a high standard as well as putting together the arena and statue.
The limitations i encountered was how difficult the head was to create at first, I then decided to create a basic head shape in Unity and to then use z brush to add features and all the details, so I did not do what i originally wanted, not only this, but i encountered a few problems with using z brush, my model had several holes, I was not able to use this so instead used my low poly statue and applied a stone texture, I was disappointed in myself that I was not able to use my high poly statue nor apply a texture properly, but i ran out of time. I found modelling overall quite different, working to real life proportions and of a body was more difficult than modelling something surreal. However, I did enjoy myself and thought it was a fun project.
