John Register

"This former race car driver quit his successful job as a New York City advertising executive one afternoon in 1972 and never returned to the office. Instead, he dedicated the rest of his life to his one true passion - painting."...

"As a race car driver he set a number of course records throughout California in the early 1960s, driving his beat-up Porsche Speedster against such rivals as Lance Reventlow and actor Steve McQueen. He studied at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, founded by his great grandfather, Charles Pratt."
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Wonder Warthog, part 5 - rendering a head design

(I'm redesigning, modeling, and rigging Gilbert Shelton's classic cartoon character, "Wonder Wart-Hog.")

This stage is for seeing how the texture maps, fur, and lighting affect the head model, and if the mesh will need to be altered to compensate. This is another design stage to work out the kinks. Perfection is not the goal at this time, so there's going to be some sloppiness.

color, displacement, and normal maps, respectively
(click to enlarge)

Above are the skin maps, seen combined in the renderings below. The color map determines the color variation throughout the surface. The displacement map subdivides the low-poly mesh to add rough detail. The normal map creates finer textural detail like pores, wrinkles, bumps, and blemishes.

hairstyling

When fur is added to a mesh, it begins as white rods that jut straight up from the entire surface. Then it must be styled (combed, trimmed, colored) using painting tools.

fur maps

These are a few attribute maps: hair density, direction, inclination, and length. Light-colored areas create more of an attribute (e.g., long or thick hair), whereas dark areas create less of an attribute (e.g., short or sparse hair). The final head will require maps for additional attributes, including color variation, curliness, and strand thickness.

final practice fur (click to enlarge)

I eventually arrive at a point where I can't justify further hair work on a practice head. Based on this, I have a pretty good idea of what alterations I'll make for the final head.

next: costume design

Wonder Warthog, part 4 - sculpting a head design

(I'm redesigning, modeling, and rigging Gilbert Shelton's classic cartoon character, "Wonder Wart-Hog.")

finished head design

I've moved into the sculptural phase of my head design, building on my sketches and anatomical research. I'm still working out what the head is going to look like, but now - by moving from 2D to 3D - I can review my design from all angles. This is a problem-solving development stage, and this head will not be used as final geometry. The final head will be modeled from scratch, along with the rest of the body, with greater complexity, after all designs are finalized.

This is a useful design phase for an imaginary creature, where anatomical proportions need to be invented, but wouldn't be necessary for an existing species like a human or a warthog.

development of base mesh

First, I create a low-poly head. I start with a cylinder, extrude the snout, and continue to extrude and split polygons until it resembles the character.

development of detailed head

I make sure the UVs are laid out nicely, then subdivide, refine, and try to bring out some personality. Details like lips, eyebrows, and bone and muscle definition are developed at this stage.

Lastly, the wrinkles and skin texture are added. (See top image.)

alternate shape

This is an alternate head I developed alongside the other one, with proportions closer to those of the original Shelton character (rounder head and longer, thinner snout), just to consider other options.

next: render designs