In the time since I sketched the original idea, I've decided to make a few changes to the character's appearance. Firstly, I'm finalising the design of the drainage apparatus as a larger tube (which will read better from a distance). It's now held in place in her airway by a mouth piece that her teeth rest on (akin to how a pacifier stays in place). It's a marked improvement from a thin tube that is barely noticeable as a dominant form in the visual design of the character.
Secondly, the plant is now going to be nestled in a papoose, or baby carrier. I personally love this change, because it not only shapes the silhouette in a visually intriguing way, but also emphasises the themes of a yearning for parenthood and having a surrogate child.
Thirdly, the other end of the drainage tube is going to be feeding the plant through a hole she's made in the pot itself, after I learned a little more about plants, I realised that while rain and water fall on the top of soil, it's actually the roots that absorb the water.
Lastly, the drainage tube itself (although it's not apparent in my sketch) has been changed. After brainstorming on the logic of how this prototype of a hospital-issued apparatus drains her air sacs (alveoli) of fluid, I've settled on absorption and air pressure control: The branching tube that actually snakes down into her lungs removes the fluid via absorbent ends. A conduit that's situated a third of the way down from the mouth-piece houses a small airlock-like control point which applies a gentle negative pressure to the mouth-piece end of the tube, pulling the fluid out and down through it. It then forces the fluid down through positive pressure to whatever drainage bag would previously have been there. The conduit also acts as an anti-foreign body barrier, ensuring whatever the bottom end of the tube comes into contact with does not enter the lungs.
Altering the pre-existing base-model:
To speed up the process, I'm using the same base-model I used for my first character, the Prophet. I am going to make a few alterations though, in the form of changing the face to be more individual and creating a more feminine chest and waist.
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| ^ main reference ^ Prophet base-model ^ alterations in ZBrush |
Finished Base-Model:
Like the sketch suggests, this character is going to have slim joints, a thin physique and generally an ectomorph body type. This woman has been in and out of intensive hospital visits, or been an in-patient for a few months. She has a high metabolism, but she's not used her muscles properly for a while either.
Marvellous Designer - Creating the Hospital Gown:
The reference was especially useful when it came to mimicking the the level of stretchiness and stiffness of the gown's fabric.
First beginning with the back and front cutting patterns, the difficulty was adjusting the physical properties until it resembled non-stretchy cotton or linen. I decided to load a physical property pre-set, and experimented with a few and tweaked their properties from there.
To lay one side of the hospital gown over the other, I used a multitude of pins and pulled different areas into place and repeated this until the fastening sides at the back were nestled over each other properly.
Blocking out the Papoose/Baby Carrier straps for Authentic Gown Deformation:
I chose to create a mock-up of the baby carrier straps in Marvellous as well to organically compress the gown under them instead of attempting to proportionally edit it later, which I've made the mistake of doing before with my Professional Brief (it takes up far too much time and the results are never completely authentic).
I also adjusted and pinned areas of the gown's skirt until it was less bell-jar shaped and angling more outward at a straight angle as I believed a stiffer fabric like this would when compressed around the hip joints by a strap.
To retopologise the gown as efficiently as possible, I learnt a technique that involves exporting both the posed mesh of a clothing item in Marvellous Designer and the flat version (reset from simulation). I then applied the deformed version as a shape key to the flattened one. Once that is applied, I was free to retopologise as normal, as long as I didn't edit the original flat version itself. Once retopology is complete, I applied a Surface Deform modifier to the retopologised cutting pattern and use the original flat mesh as a target mesh to copy the deformation from. So in only a few steps, I retopologised the gown mesh without having to trace polygons from the posed model.
Adjusting the Feet:
The base-model's feet were not an appropriate shape for those of a slight, young woman. Copying my own feet in socks, I slimmed them down in preparation for the slippers, with the image of a delicate pair of feet in mind for this character.
When people see the footwear, I want them to think 'hospital issue'. I plan to model the slippers after the reference almost to the letter, I want them to look like she walked out of the empty hospital yesterday (a bit like the beginning of 28 Days Later). But I also plan to make them muddy and soiled, to imply that she's absent-mindedly passed through a few puddles when trying to avoid attention. Ideally I don't want them to look at all like they're practical footwear.
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To make the soles, I imported one of my reference images and traced polygons on it directly. I then extruded an area to create the arch of the slipper and bridged it to the mirroring area on the inside of it. I also made sure to pull up the arch of the sole a little.
Papoose / Baby Carrier:
I think the addition of the papoose is going to bring the whole look of this character together. (As for the canonical reasoning for adding it, I like to think she picked it up at the maternity ward of the hospital after its emptied.)
I blocked out the papoose straps using the placeholders I made in Marvellous Designer as a base. I then set about bevelling some edges, scaling some edge-loops and subdividing some pieces until it resembled the recognisable insulated mesh fabric as seen in my reference.
One of the challenges of modelling the papoose was changing the design from the reference to fit around a plant pot without compromising smooth topology, but I managed to alter the way that the straps would originally have been sewn to the inside of the 'seat.'
Hands:
I never actually retopologised the hands of the base-model previously because I wanted to tackle some of the more difficult areas of the character first. I've still not acquired the skill to perfectly retopologise hands on the first try around areas like the curlicue (between index and thumb) or properly merging edge-loops between the hand and the wrist, but it is at least clean topology. I also decided to proportionally edit the hi and low poly meshes as I though the hands weren't elegantly enough shaped, particularly the muscle between the fifth finger and wrist.
Hair:
This will be my attempt to fashion hair using hair cards (alpha ribbons etc). There aren't a lot of tutorials that I could find online that were all that helpful, so I looked at pre-existing game's assets to observe how they were constructed (among the ones I already had installed which were made in Unity and Unreal Engine that my asset viewer software could access were Dead By Daylight and Pathologic 2). After studying the hair assets for a while, I think I now have a clearer understanding of how dense to make the hair cards, how wide and roughly how to lay them to create the kind of hair I want.
I want the final body of hair to follow the silhouette of my original concept sketch, so I sculpted while having an overlay of that image in ZBrush and also followed my board of hair reference to make sure the hair would flow and sit on the character's head realistically.
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| ^Reference in asset viewer alpha I made ^ |
I feel I should ensure that the hair cards I end up modelling are the proper shape and layout for texturing by making a placeholder hair alpha strip and applying it to each hair card ribbon I make as I go. After looking through the texture assets of games I had installed, I found an alpha image to use as loose reference for my own.
I'm approaching this like laying the hairs for a wig, from bottom to top and space out the hair cards evenly up the scalp, while also following the greater boundary of the sculpted hair body.
I've been trying to make each tress of hair a little unkempt, but I went overboard and backcombed each one without regard for how their waves would (or rather wouldn't) line up with each other in a convincing or appropriate way. So I've taken a moment to proportionately edit them in bulk so the hair doesn't look so crazy. It needs to suit a character with a mild disposition, which the fiery arrangement really didn't. Ideally, I would like the hair to look as though it were in a pony tail and one point and it's now been taken out but not been wetted since, so it still has that kink there.
While the rest of the modelling besides the hair had taken 5 days, I'd assumed that since the hair didn't take up that much 3 dimensional space, that it wouldn't take long. The hair ended up taking 4 days by itself. It is the most tedious thing I've ever modelled. But it's finally done, and I'm actually quite satisfied with the results.
The face has previously been the base-model's face but I've now altered it to look less generic. I thought about sculpting from reference of specific people (mainly Olwen Catherine Kelly) but the face didn't suit the character when I attempted it, so instead I've opted to use my original concept sketch as tracing reference for the model and proportionally edited it until they roughly lined up. Her face definitely fits her more now.
Additionally I opened her jaw a little bit as a rest pose because her teeth would always be slightly agape with the drainage tube going into her mouth.
Finally, the Plant:
The big decision I had to make about the plant was 'what kind?'. Nothing with flowers was a chosen parameter, nothing that looked too much like a house plant. Something that looked appealing but also fragile and would look comfortable in a baby carrier. After browsing through pictures of plants, I think I found one that would fit the character very nicely: a Maidenhair fern.
A Maidenhair's leaves are thin and have beautiful shapes, their stalks are dainty, and it's a plant that requires a little more attention than average. An interesting footnote is that they apparently require small but frequent water feedings rather than larger feedings occasionally, which actually fits Gaia's fluid drainage apparatus perfectly.
Another reason this plant ended up being my choice was that I find it subjectively cute and fragile.
The fronds are relatively flat in their layout as well, so it'll be a simple job to model them.
I traced the basic shape of a frond from one of my reference images and then proportionally curved it. To flesh out the whole plant, I made 3 frond variations and duplicated them while angling each differently to avoid them looking like identical copies.
Adding Gardening Tools:
I decided to add tools and attach them to the papoose waist strap since I made the effort to model belt loops to it. I think it'll also change her silhouette from looking a little underwhelming. To fasten the tools in place, I modelled two leather strips similar to the ones you'd usually see attached to trowels and such.
Within a hair's breadth of the maximum 70,000 triangle budget, I think my final polycount should be smaller. However I felt uncomfortable removing any of her underlying body as the looseness of the gown would mean that you'd see holes in her through the sleeves or when the skirt reacts to physics in a game. I would sacrifice some of the horizontal poly-loops in the gown's hem but I don't want to loose cloth physics fidelity.
Since it is below the threshold, I'm going to leave her model as is.
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