Character Style Ideation & Beginning to Model

I started by sketching out some very rough poses as a warm-up (and to motivate myself to get started by putting something on the page), then I copied the body styles from my reference page, focusing just on the forms of the bodies.

This really helped me better identify the similarities and differences between these styles. All these styles have heads that are around the same width as the shoulders so I'll likely stick with that. The limbs and face details are where these styles differ the most. 

I continued to draw some different poses using similar proportions as the references, playing around mostly with the sharpness and definition. I realised while working on this, that this is good practice for my 2D art skills as well, since I tend to struggle with stylisation. This is something that I always intend to practice and study more. 

I also realised that I can only figure out so much through 2D sketches and I might actually be able to work through a lot more variation through creating and tinkering with the 3D model itself. With this in mind, I'm going to change my approach to style ideation. I'll work on creating and adjusting the model while I sketch out ideas and have these build off of each other. The body will likely be easier to figure out by adjusting the 3D model, but details such as the hair, face, and clothing style will be easier to figure out in 2D. These aspects should be cohesive and so it'll be good to work on them concurrently like this.

14/11/25

I made this basic body model, mostly following the first sketch I'd made. I'm quite happy with this. I had originally begun the model with more realistically curved legs but it looked boring and uncanny. I'll play around further with drastic proportions. 

Technical Note: Learnt that I can flatten vertices along an axis using the scale tool.

I started modelling a hand, then remembered that I had modelled a hand for a previous project that I could import into this project.

body.007

I simplified the hand model somewhat by removing some edgeloops across the fingers and thumb. This already gives it a blocker and more simplistic/stylistic look. I plan on simplifying the knuckles and upper palm as well but need to figure out a decent way to do this - I'll likely need to have a few triangles in there. I'll probably still need to adjust some things to make the hand look more stylised as well. Something that I am unsure about with simplifying the hands is whether I'll be able to rig the hand as effectively with less detailing. Because of this, I'll be sure to incrementally save my project and track which save has what.

17/11/25

body.012

This is the basic body model. I think this will be workable as it is and I could move on to rigging now since I'm sure I can go back to adjust/add minor things around the proportions*. I'll likely just see how I feel about moving on to the rigging stage or whether I want to refine the model a bit more. I haven't put much work into the head shape and could probably add ears now if I would like to (I won't need to rig these though). The hands are also still a bit too realistic and could still be blockier. They look a bit large but I think the size is about right, it just looks off because of the realism.

* 26/11/25: After doing some research on rigging, I realise adjusting the mesh is possible but a bit more of a hassle than I realised

19/11/25

body.013

I ended up simplifying the hands further and scaling them down a little. I removed the gap between the fingers and reshaped the fingers a bit to make them blockier. I also made the thumb a bit larger.

 

body.015

Ear modelled. I'm not sure if I should add another loop around where the ear connects to the head. I believe that in a more high poly model, I would do this, but since this is meant to be low poly, that level of detail might look out of place for the style.

I think the character model is looking quite good but still maybe a little too generic and uncanny because of its large head and still overly defined musculature. Hopefully things will look better once the hair and clothes are modelled, and with the texturing. I'll have to see if the joints still look okay once animated/in different poses as well. I could spend weeks just trying to refine the body model, but I do need to move on to the next stage soon in order to keep things moving.

Next Step:

I'll need to research how to rig a body in Maya. I have yet to do any kind of research and so I'm not sure yet what the steps will be.