I actually worked for Red Vision again who were commissioned by Discovery to do the VFX for the show. I’ve never been one for sciences, being a character modeler helped, but saying that, I like to think I know my anatomy but there were areas where I would draw a blank even my own Anatomy for Artists book failed me, and I would have to either trawl through medical books available in the studio or spend a few hours on google picking up reference images. It was a very intense project to work on, I was really under the gun being pretty much the only modeler on the show while the other guys were doing all the animation, look dev, rendering and comps. I was churning out body parts by the bucket load. Apart from using Maya, Zbrush was my other tool of choice, it really came to the fore on quite a few occasions. I think the entire crew became qualified doctors by the end of the show.
Please tell us what mistakes modelers often do and would you like to give any 5 tips to the future wannabe character modelers?
I think the biggest mistakes basically come from inexperience, modeling is a natural progression really, the more you do, the better you become(hopefully) like anything else.
My top 5 tips for character modeler wannabes would be:
1. Learn anatomy and proportions.
2. Use reference
3. Draw! Sounds crazy but drawing or sketching is probably one of the biggest underlying fundamentals of 3d. Plus it will get you away from the monitor.
4. Keep your meshes clean and of a good resolution. I see alot of models with too many polygons even in the early stages. Always start low rez and push the forms as far as you can before adding more polys. The mesh will be far more manageable for UV map creation as well.
5. Lastly, don’t hide away, join the forums and get some critics, but be prepared for it, your feedback won’t be all positive. But by taking on the more relevant and constructive comments and applying them to your work you will improve a lot faster.
