The drawings

Starting out any modelling project would normally begin with getting a pencil and paper out to draw the idea down. I'm going to break the tutorial down until I sort out the image storage space issues and options here for me in this blog. Here is the simple character I drew earlier on.

[fig 1]

The picture is small, but just big enough to outline what we should be aiming at, a simple 3d low polygon character for use in a computer game. This next update to the drawing shows the colour concept we have in mind when we get to the texturing phase.

[fig 2]

An alien entity with body armour, and metallic pincer like appendages, amongst other things. I'm going to begin with the body. Usually, for symmetrically aligned 3d images or models, the modeller models only one half. When that half has been completed, he or she would proceed to copy or mirror that half, to form the other side of the model. Mirroring creates a laterally inverted representation of the first half.

You know what? I'm going to cut out the fancy language in this tutorial, and stick to simple effective English. Lateral inversion just means your left becomes right, and your right becomes left, just the same as when you look into a mirror.

Ill stop here now to sort out some issues that need configuring on my blog, it seems I don't really need to break up my tutorials into little pieces. I have a lot of images as well, and I need to make sure that I don't run out of storage space.

Before I go, I'd just drop a few points when it comes to character creation. There are many approaches to the topic, you can get inspiration from many sources around you. All it takes really is for you to stretch the boundaries of your imagination. When I started this blog, I titled it 2 worlds because apart from the real world we see around us, I do spend quite a lot of time in cyberspace these days, which although is vast, in the true sense of the word, in comparison to the unknowns of distant galaxies and the cosmos, it is actually insignificant in its size. It is a form of escapism, I cant help but picture the ostrich which seeks refuge by hiding its head underground when threatened.

Talking about stretching your imagination, we all talk and speculate about the possibility of intelligent life existing somewhere in the universe. We've all been enthralled by alien species in films and things of the sort. The question I want to ask is if they do exist somewhere out there, whats the guarantee that they would assume the same shape and humanoid form that we ourselves were created in? My immediate answer is there's no guarantee. The only time that I would say with 100% conviction that that would be the case is if they originated from a planetoid body with features almost Identical to the mother earth we know.

By imagining inhabited planets with features drastically different from earth, you would be on the first step towards the conceptualisation of your unique character. Larger gravity would equate to larger mesomorphic entities. A planet with a harsh atmosphere, possibly with circulating poisonous gases would dramatically alter the breathing apparatus of any alien species from the ones we know. That's just to provide some food for thought, I'll stop typing here now.