Minor - Pipe Dwellers Head Modelling

 Currently, work on rigging the "Sock-Stealer" has come to halt due to some difficulties with blendshapes, which I am in discussion with my tutor about. So to not be wasting time and to continue moving forward, I had decided to start modelling the Pipe-Dwellers. Sadly, these took me far longer than hoped due to feeling quite poorly at the beginning of the week, which also meant I forgot to take progression screen captures.

However, regardless of these setbacks, I'm quite pleased with how the head modelling has turned out. Looking up some rodents for references, I wanted to try and capture the round cheeks which Japanese Flying Squirrels have. My final outcome did stray slightly from the original design and orthographs, this being mainly the larger areas under the eyes have been removed. I found that modelling these just made the head looks skeletal rather than "plushy", so I decided to remove them.

I have made the neck ruffle at the moment, but this is more likely to change shape when it comes to modelling the body. Also, I reduced the size of the pipe antlers. When following the orthographs they looked far to big and just seems out of place. 

Mood Board

Rodent eyes are more positioned along the side of the head, this means that when moving the eyes it seems to creates a odd gap. This gap is mainly due to the Cornea being textured as glass, but when moving the eyes during render, the IOR hides that gap well. The "Pipe-Dwellers" will be mainly turning their heads sideways to look, so this will also help to remove the problem. 

Notable Gap and Glass Cornea

Rendered