Personal Project for induction days

We have been tasked with creating a personal mini project for our two induction days. I've chosen to 3D model an already existing character. However i would like to put a spin on it so its not completly the same. With 3D modelling I have already been modelling certain already existing characters to help me pratice certain skills, for example I recently modelled Morty from 'Rick and Morty' and the new skill I learnt was rigging eyes. Everything else about the model was pretty simple but I am trying to put together skills and techniques as I make more models.

The next technique I wanted to learn was making fur/hair on a character/creature. I thought about creatures to use this technique on and I didn't want to just make like a dog or cat, I wanted it to be something has quite a unique design (with my own spin on it to change it up a bit). I thought about franchises that have a lot of unique and creative creature designs and here are some collages of those. I have made a little criteria about what I want to model and I'll be looking through franchises to see if I can find any characters that fit this criteria.

Pokemom

The first franchise for having unique creatures with fur is Pokemon. There are hundreds of Pokemon to choose from that have fur so its not an easy decision. I chose some photos of some good examples of Pokemon.

My Singing Monsters

The next frnachise that came to mind was My Singing Monsters. I think this came to mind after Pokemon because the creatures seem to be like wild animals as well as having crazy design. However, what makes them different to Pokemon is that most of them have instruments and objects that make sound, so I would be making a model of an instrument aswell. I also really like the vibrant colours of these monsters and think that they would be fun to model since these creatures aren't as popular as something like Pokemon so there are gonna be less models already existing online.

Bojack Horseman

I previously mentioned I wasn't really wanting to model real animals like dogs and cats and since Bojack Horseman is a show consisting of a cast of real animals it seems to go agaisnt my preference. However, I think these charcters just make it into my ideas of what to model. These animals are humanoid (which is known as an anthropomorphic animal). While humanoid animals has been done many times before in game and film media, I think these characters just look more appealing. Whether they'd still look appealing in 3D is up for debate once its been modelled.

Rick and Morty

My final idea for now is Rick and Morty. This came to mind from also being an adult animation show like Bojack Horseman. However, unlike Bojack Horseman being based around real animals you'd see in our world, Rick and Morty has a bunch of sci-fi creatures with some being inspired by real animals and some just being completly...."Out of this world". While there are a lot of creatures to choose from, most do not have a lot of fur or hair. If i were to model a creature it would probaly be quite a less known character from the show since most the main characters don't fit my criteria.

My decision

I have chose to model the 'Furcorn' from 'My Singing Monsters'. I made a quick collage of different official designs and variants from the game.

I decided to choose the Furcorn because I enjoy its simple yet unique design. I also liked that there were multiple variants of the species which are known as 'Rare Furcorn' (Pink) and 'Epic Furcorn' (Blue). With it being a simple design it means I will probably have enough time to make both the rare and epic version by just changing the colour and tweaking the model a bit. The bodys are also slightly different shaped so this will give me a chance to expermient with making fur in Blender. To make my own varient of the character I'll need a theme and I will either choose a Halloween variant or a Birthday variant. The reason for these ideas is since Halloween is very soon. The Birthday idea comes from the fact that 'My Singing Monsters' turned 9 on the 4th September of 2021. For a halloween variant, I would most likely change the fur colour to orange or black with those both being typical Halloween colours. I'd also make the leaf on his head look as though its dying due to Halloween taking place in Autumn. A Birthday theme would be a bit more challenging. However my first idea is to make the Furcorn look like a birthday cake and have the leaf branch be replaced with a candle.

The Process

To start things of I stretched out a UV Sphere on the Z-Axis by only a little.

I then shade smoothed it and coloured it green in the material properties tab on the right side, making it look almost like a green egg.

Click the Particle Properties on the right side and press the + sign to bring up the settings and then click the hair tab which will make the mesh look like this.

Change the length to how long you want the hairs to be, I chose 0.4m

To make the hair look like hair you'll need to enable 'Interpolated' which is under the 'Children' tab. To make more hairs you need to turn up the Display Amount.

Clumping will make bits of hair look like its stuck together which I have turned up a bit.

To give the hair more shape I'm going into Particle Edit in the top left where Object Mode is.

There are different tools in Particle Edit like the comb, which acts like how a real comb would on hair. If I want the hair to go down the comb comes in handy.

It can be difficult to see how you want to comb it with just black lines but there is a way to make the actual hair visible when combing. You'll need to go in the 'Active Tool and Workspace settings' and then select the children box.

After doing a lot of editing and combing this is how its body turned out

I recreated the little dent that The Furcorn on its lower back.

Now that I'm done with the main body I'm going to start the other body parts. I started making the feet first. I used a cube and used the extrude and scale tool to form a basic foot shape.

I made the three toes by extruding the faces of the front of the foot.

After finishing the feet, I unwrapped them and sent them over to substance to texture.

After testing some textures in substance I soon realised that my unwrap was not right so I had to go back and change it. This is how the textures looked on the wrong unwrap.

This was my new Unwrap.

This is my textures in Substance, I used generators to give the feet some dirt looks to it.

I exported my textures back onto Blender and went into the shading tab and connected each texture to its correct spot.

To save time, I used a mirror modifier to make another leg. Plus using the mirror modifier means my legs are symmetrical.

I noticed the feet were a bit shiny so I went into the shading tab and turned down the specular a bit. After this it was time to move onto the eyes. I used a UV Sphere for the inner eye and then sculpted a cube around the sphere to make the eye lid that the monster has.

I exported the mesh over to substance and started to texture it. I used eyebrow skin for the eye lid since it was bumpy, however I changed the colour to be more pink and added a bit of pink rust for more detail. I made the eye quite reflective so it could look as real as possible.

Back in Blender, I added my textures in the shading tab. I wanted the height to show on the eye lid so I added a 'Bump' which let me add height and the normal map.

After the eyes were completed I realised that I'm not far from finished, theres only the mouth and branch on its head to go. However I realised the mouth might be tricky to make. I started with a plane rather than a cube so I could get the shape of the mouth correct

I made the mouth hollow and added some teeth with the extrusion tool and scale tool.

Once I textured the mouth and teeth in Substance, the next thing I had to do was actually put the mouth where it should be which seems to be the most challenging part so far.

With a lot of trial and error, I realised I wouldn't be able to connect the mouth to the head while the hair was there. This ended up with me getting rid of the hair for now but eventually I will make some more.

The branch was fairly simple to make.

For my textured leaf I used leather textures and made it green, I added another leather under the green leather and made it orange to show that the leaf is slowly dying, in time for Autumn. I used a dirt generator to show the other leather.

Here is my final render.

While there is a lot I know I could improve on, for example the hair shows up in some places that it wasn't meant to be like the mouth and teeth. Overall, I think I made a good first attempt at modelling with hair in Blender.