What I did:

I’ve finished modelling my stylised John! Well, pretty much – there might be just a couple more tweaks needed, but the majority of the work is done. I’ve now gone through 50 out of the 83 lessons in the course, so I’m doing well.

The demonstration model from the course is basic, so I’ve had to figure out quite a bit on my own. The eyelids and eyelashes weren’t covered in the tutorials, so I had to work those out for myself. Same with the clothing – the course character is wearing pants and a top, but mine needed a full 1970s suit, shirt, and tie. That took a while to get right!

The hair has been a bit of a struggle, if I’m honest. I’m still not 100% happy with it, but it’ll work for now. I can always come back and refine it later if needed. I’m also not sure if the head is sitting right with me, is there a disconnect between the eyelashes and eyebrows? I’ll do what I always do, live with it for a while and see if I feel the need to change anything.

I’ve been trying to think ahead whilst creating materials. My plan is to partially age the character by adding and adjusting shader nodes, so I’ve set things up with that in mind. Hopefully this forward planning will save me time when I’m creating the more mature versions of dad.

I UV unwrapped the suit, tie, and eyeballs, to texture them, making my own textures in Photoshop. UV is something I’ve always been challenged by, but I now get it, so that’s handy!

I also used some of my recent learnings about shader nodes to create materials from scratch, such as the leather for the shoes and the skin for the character.

What I learned:

Sometimes you have to figure things out yourself, even when following a comprehensive course. The tutorials give you the foundation, but applying it to your specific project means problem-solving and working things out as you go. Thankfully I have a broad understanding of a lot of Blender’s features, but I have so much more still to learn. I continued to pick up time-saving tricks while working through this section.

I’m fairly confident I won’t have too many issues with the character topology when I start animating. The edge loops are in the right places so that’s a start!

Next:

Body rigging! This is the stage I’ve been looking forward to with trepidation. The course uses Rigify, which should make life easier, but we’ll see, as I’ve never used it before. Once the body rig is done and working correctly, I’ll move on to facial rigging – gulp!

Getting there!