Making Gary
To start with I researched the work of my Illustrator who specialises in 3D illustrations. Once researching him I knew I wanted to make a 3D illustration some how. After researching into different types of 3d rendering software (blender, mcad etc) I downloaded Cinema 4D.
I clearly did not understand how to use the software to begin with, and it took multiple tries to just make a blob with arms. But after watching a couple of tutorials on youtube I brought my character to life.
The initial drawing was drawn in the style of Chamaco after researching his characters and illustrations.
With my character in mind I set about constructing him in cinema 4D.
I started with a cube from here I place in gouraud shading lines. These provided my with the sub sections for when I build up the construction of my character.
After changing the hight and the thickness of the body I was then able to make arms and legs.
To get this far I watched the tutorial found in the video below.
Once I had the main body and shape I constructed an eye, mouth and antena to had character to him.
Once fully constructed I experimented with different textures and effects using various materials available in cinema 4D. At first I tried a solid plastic colour/material. However I didn't realise I could make lights and rigs within the software. So I looked into a youtube video into how to make a light rig but found I could download pre made rigs. Figured if I try these for now and then I could go back to seeing how I could make them myself.
By using the different light rigs I found they would produce sleeker outcomes. I also found that certain materials behaved differently under the different rigs. I tried metal, glass and plastic with reflective floors and backgrounds.
As you can see in this image I found that the render was not as smooth as I wanted it to be. To correct this I discovered I need to put the subordinates up to 6 to make the render smoother and more like the properties of metal and chrome.
Once I had got to grips with cinema 4D a bit I wanted to push myself even more. I wanted to try and animate my character. To do so I experimented with multiple attempts. I tried to animate just by moving the sections of the character but found they needed to be key framed. And I also would not be able to just animate the sections on their own I need to make a character rig (skeleton that would work on the inside of the character.
I was able to change the pose of my character instead of animate it. However I found this useful as I would be able to use this knowledge in the future if I was to make stagnant shots of 3D characters for posters or brand designs.
As you can see in the images below I have changed my character slightly by experimenting with the different poses and number of eyes.
I still needed to find a way of animating my character but I was happy with these outcomes. I went on to construct a character rig that would fit inside my character after watching this tutorial which I found really helpful.
After watching this tutorial I was able to make my character do a simple walking cycle. At this point I was happy with the outcome as I found I was spending too much time on just this one. When I get the chance I want to hopefully improve this outcome to make him wave and do other motions.
For my final outcome I looped the short 3 second walk cycle in Adobe after effects and added different visual effects to make the video interesting and engaging.