The second part of the art assignment was to create our cartoon character in 3D.

If I had known this beforehand I may have chose a simpler design....

Anyways... Having worked in 3DS MAX briefly in my first year I new the first thing to do was create my characters head on a plane.

Using photoshop I quickly sketched what I though my characters profile would like from the front and the side.

I then imported this image as a diffuse texture onto a plane in 3DS MAX.

Working from the plane in-front of me on screen I created a rectangle in-front of the image and began altering the geometry of the mesh to fit with the plane image behind the object.

I have further worked on the model.

Final Model

Unfortunately I have never got around to texturing the model.

Is this your office?

Having created my character I now wish to give him a location to reside. After all he looks lonely in the white void.

I have decided the best place for my character would be to give him a detective office. I have images of old detective movies in my head which feature a small, dark, smokey, and wood furnished office with the detectives' name on a glass pane on the door and a slither of sunlight filtering through the window blind.

This is my idea for the area of the office I would like to display my character. It feature the detective sign on the door. A hat stand traditionaly and a window to allow for light to be cast between the blinds.

I have begun again by adding colour and shade to certain areas of the room. I have tried to keep most of the colours used as shades of brown as I don't want the background to be to bright. I also think it helps to create the feeling of a wooden environment.

I have added the blinds to the room and copied them to the side of the wall so it looks as though they are casting a shadow in the environment. Using the gradient tool I have created a source of light that shines across the room altering the shade of the objects it passes over. I have again manually drawn around the objects in the environment with a black line so they look much more illustrated.

Only one thing missing.....

Actually I think he also needs a dame in distress.

Magical Outlines

Having previously began block colouring my character in photoshop. I have continued to work on this area since.

I have tried to use two shades of the same colour to create the difference between light and dark areas on the character and to help define the shape of certain items such as the Columbo's faithful coat. I have found this to be quite the trial and error process to get the effect I am after.

Something still seems to be missing though. I don't feel like the character pops out enough. This was when I decided to try and create a black ink style outline around the character to make him look bolder in a comic style. Not fully understanding photoshop at the time of creating the outline I chose to simply draw a line around the character. I found by changing the thickness of my brush and so changing the depth of the line randomly around the character it helped the outline look more dynamic.

 

This is my final image. Purrrfect.

I have touched up some areas that were unfinished such as the hat and facial fur.

The only thing left to do is give him a background.



Just one more thing.

For our first art assignment I was tasked with creating a cartoon style character design that I could then illustrate using photoshop.

Originally I began working straight in photoshop to try and create the character sketches as quick as possible from the ideas in my head.

 

Not being happy with any of the sketches I was creating in photoshop I returned to my traditional art background and started drawing with pen and pencil. This allowed me to work away from the screen and concentrate more on my designs.

 

After creating my initial concept sketches I took my chosen design into photoshop to see if I could turn the sketch into a character illustration.

Meet Columbo Cat.

I thought of the idea of a pet detective. Which I also think could make an interesting game too.
The character as I think you can tell is based on the worlds greatest detective (in my eyes) Columbo.

This is my first illustration in photoshop so I began by creating areas of colour to try and flesh out the character. I also had fun using the pen curve tool which seems wickedly complex to a deluxe paint user.