Step 20. BACK TO THE LEGS

The front leg can be built in exactly the same way as the rear. You should even be
able to cut the foot off the rear leg and sew it onto the front leg, avoiding any
unnecessary remodeling. Here you can see that I am trying to put some muscle
details in, I think the area is known as the Quadriceps in humans, but don't quote
me! The exact same technique is used, as we used on the heel of the foot, in the
previous steps

Fig. 22. The muscles around the thighs can be formed with
help from the smooth shift and bevel discussed earlier.

Step 21. A TIDY UP

A few more details and a tidy up have been done on the body. A few slices with the
Bandsaw here and there. The Bandsaw will let you define areas a bit better, for
instance around the neck I have added a couple of slices, and pulled them in close to
the existing neck muscle to give a more pronounced form. You will also see that
those same lines have been pulled into the centre over the back, where we want a
smoother less defined area. It is also worth, as I mentioned before, thinking ahead.
There are still details which need to be, or can be added, but we still haven't built the
head and we don't know what effect this is going to have on the body model.
Remember the toes and the foot/leg. So now let's look at that!

Step 21. THE HEAD

As far as the head I will give you a start and a few pointers along the way. I am not
going to give you a full step by step. The process involves using the techniques we
have discussed, such as Bandsaw and point dragging, but also involves making
mistakes ie. ' Well that didn't work, let's try arranging the polys this way'. That is the
way to learn.

(i). The modeling can be approached, as I said, in similar ways to that we have
already discussed. In Fig. 24 we have built the outline, as we did with the torso,
ready for extrusion.

Fig. 24. A safe and easy start point of
creating our outline, ready to extrude.

(ii). The outline is extruded and the points around the mouth and trunk are scaled in.
You can see the shape starting to take form already.

Fig. 24. Extruded, and the points scaled.

(iii). The Bandsaw is then used to give me more detail to work with and I have
assigned an are for the eyes and deleted. The points above and below the Bandsaw
line on the trunk are pulled in on the X axis to bring back the rounded shape.

Fig. 25. The Bandsaw is used to add another line of detail.

(iv). I have added a few more details here. The gap for the eye I made into a polygon
and beveled in, fine tuning the position with the Drag tool. I then used the Bandsaw to
give me another ring around the eye, and the bottom few polygons I Smooth Shifted
out to make the bump under the eye.

Fig. 26. The eyes are added and the cheek is prepared for a clean up

(v). Now, to make a model clean, you want to try and consider the contours. Around
the cheek, and jaw area I would like to address this, so I have cut a few polys out.
See Fig. 26 and I will redraw them. Often with head modeling you will have to do this.
Some modelers even prefer to draw the whole model point by point.

Using the side view and my Point tool (Press +) I have created a few points and
converted them into polys. Then I have selected the surrounding points and filled in
the rest of the polys. You will see that the Bandsaw is needed on the bottom of the
bump, up to the eye, and that two slices need to be added to the top poly, infront of
the eye. See fig 27. You will also see we have a nice rounded flow of polys in the Jaw
area See fig 28. This technique can be applied in other parts of the model.

Fig. 27. I start to create some polys following the contours.

Fig. 28. There is now a nice contour formed in the Jaw area.

NEXT PAGE CLICK HERE . . . . BACK 1 PAGE CLICK HERE . . . . TOP OF PAGE CLICK HERE . . . .