Adam Phan
Visual Artist - Illustrator
3D Character - Ainjiel
For my second year project at university I had to create a 3D character and environment using 3DS Max.
I decided to take the challenge of modelling a female as my first character in 3D, as females have the difficulty of sculpting complex hair as well as the body proportions with the breast and face to give a femimine aesthetic.
I established from the very beginning within my sketches and research that my character will have a cartoon and manga style design and texture instead of a realistic one.
As this would help give the character a more fun and cute appearance from the costume design and face/hair since the manga style allows me to experiment with more forms of fashion and designs for the character instead of a realistic style.
The character I designed for this project was a Japanese girl named Ainjiel, that worked as a maid by day, and an assassin by night. So for this project my aim was to create a 3D model of Ainjiel and a cafe environment for her.
Ainjiel - Character Art
For the character art, I researched into Japanese maid cafes and outfits since there are various themes and services that are catered to customers including traditional cafes or pop star cafes where maids will wear uniforms and dresses to entertain as well as serve customers.
I designed my character with the traditional black and white maid outfit with the twist of a Japanese pop outfit to represent the culture as well as innocent and cute style.
For the hairstyle I took inspiration from Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII and Alisa Bosconovitch from the Tekken series to create a short pink hair style with a long curl that flows down the left side of Ainjiel's head. I also added a skull hair pin and tie to represent the uniform of the innocent looking assassin as well as being a logo for the cafe itself.
The sword and gun that I have designed is just to show the type of weapons that Ainjiel would use as an assassin, however since this is just a 3D character and environment project, I will only be modelling Ainjiel and the cafe, using the art and body profile as references within 3DS Max.
Ainjiel - Rendered Images
As part of this 3D character project I had to take 5 rendered images of my model and environment. I had to rig a skeleton into my model of Ainjiel so I could animate and pose my character model for the renders, showing some personality within the images instead of a constant standing pose for all the renders.
I turned on the Turbosmooth option to make my character model more realistic and detailed for this render process, emphasising the curves and structure on Ainjiel's body including the face, hair and clothes.
I wanted to express the welcoming and friendly nature of Ainjiel as a maid by posing her greeting viewers into the cafe as well as serving and enjoying a coffee.
Ainjiel - Textures and UVW Map
Since this was my first 3D character model I did not understand how to consistently UVW map my character as the eyes and hair objects were seperate from the main body model, so I had 3 texture maps for Ainjiel instead of 1. However the model was still working and had the correct textures with no disruption or overlapping textures when I attached all objects together.
For Ainjiel's face, I used the pelt mapping technique to mark out her face and flatten it out for me to texture easily knowing where to add shades, details and make up to her face. As for Ainjiel's body and costume I selected faces of the model and used normal mapping to break down the character in parts.
I used a pink hair texture for the hair and the character model I used the basic colours/gradients and blending techniques to create the cartoon/manga style aesthetic.
Ainjiel - Wireframe Renders
Looking at the wireframe renders of my 3D character model, I was proud with the structure and organisation of the polygons for my first attempt at a modelling a humanoid and that there isnt too much detail or complexity. Looking at the inside section of the head of Ainjiel one minor improvement I could've made is the inner section of the head where the hair sits.
As there is a large amount of detail here in the wireframe view as I attached the hair object to the head without deleting the back section of the head from the neck along towards the forehead. However it is only a minor modelling consistency problem and nothing important that affected this project.
When I was building the 3D character model, I used the mirror technique so I could build one half of the body and the model would replicate and copy the geometry on to the otherside in which I could then sew both halves of the body together by welding the vertexes along the middle of the model.