I did some more modelling for my persona's clothes and more experimenting with that workflow I've been using! I plan on trying to make a proper character model using the workflow in the coming week. I've got an idea on what I can do which could be sort of simple.

The character redesigns are still slow going. It's more of the same, trying to get clothes to look right in a way that I enjoy looking at it. I managed to get the saggy pants that I wanted, which I'm quite happy about! I used Maya's dynamic nCloth system to get the bottom parts of the pants to sag in a way that I think looks good. I think that the vest still needs some work, however. I've considered multiple times of just scrapping the vest, but I feel as though it holds too much of an important role in terms of the characterisation of the persona and the silhouette of it all. I might have a look at some other clothes that I could use instead that still give off a punk style, but for the time being I reckon I'm going to stick with it.

For more exciting news, I've done some more experimenting with my workflow!

This experiment in particular was quite a milestone. I did my best to make a very rough organic female humanoid model. I'm not really the best at making blockouts so I found one on Gumroad by Gakabox that I could use for this.

I'm really happy with the results that I managed to get out of this! I'm really excited with the potential of using this for some actual models that I can use in the future. Like the other experiments, I used Maya's Quad Draw in conjunction with the live object tool so that I can follow along with the shape of the base mesh. I also had some topology guides on my second monitor to follow along with as I went about this, since I am really bad at edge flow. I didn't completely finish it since I only wanted to see how far I can go without having a character in mind (I managed to get this done in a day, which is impressive for me!). There's plenty of problems with the mesh, like edge flow and nasty topology, but for a test, I think it passed with flying colours! There are a few issues that I ran into when I was working on this however. One of the main problems that I had was vertices slipping underneath the surface of the mesh. This was because of how the base mesh was structured. Like many other base meshes, it's comprised of various different shapes in a blockout of a character. This means that the vertices will sometimes get confused when extruding, and go underneath where I want it to go. This should be a fairly simple fix of dynameshing the pieces together in Zbrush. I also don't get as much detail as I could if I were to make the model myself. I don't really want to concern myself with this though. The amount of time that I save using this workflow compared to learning and perfecting sculpting and stylised anatomy myself is immense. The other issue is more of a mental one rather than a technical one. For some reason, I have this little voice in the back of my head that says that this is cheating. Which, to be frank, is ridiculous. Why would using a free base mesh be cheating? I think the main thing is my obsession with having to every part of the pipeline myself and my perfectionism. I have a really hard time asking people for help, so this could stem from that in a way. I'm trying very hard to shut up that voice in my head, but it does peep through every now and then when doing this.

I'm very excited to see how far I can push this workflow! The character that I've got in mind is an OC that I've had floating around in my head for a while now. They started out as a little play around with a Picrew ages ago that I've somewhat fleshed out into a character. I'm hoping that this new way of making models will allow me to actually make it while saving time on having to learn sculpting. I've found some more resources on Gumroad that I'm very excited to use. They all help to make the certain style that I'm looking for. I really hope that I will be able to make some progress on it and show it next week!

I'm also planning on making something for this year's Low-poly day! It won't be as high priority as the OC model, but it'll be a good opportunity to see how the workflow deals with lower polygon character models! It will also be a good opportunity to see if I can make some models with different restraints that I'm used to. I've got a good image in mind that I want to make!

Thank you and good-bye for today!