Her Heart Was Bionic

I've wanted to do some Anna / Gaston "movie posters" for some time now.  I have a few more ideas in the works, but here is the first one, inspired by the poster for "This Gun For Hire."

...And More Texturing.

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Saw this music video by "Oh Land" yesterday night and was suddenly inspired to use the same makeup for "Mother" in my project. (She's the lady in the frame in the Red Room). First I did a [really ugly] painting to see if I liked the makeup in combination with the face shape and hair, then I started mapping it out. I also played with making her appear older via a rougher bump map with some light wrinkling. Wanted her to still have a timeless appearance like Streep or Mirren.

This was fun because I got to contrast the robotic appearance of "Anna" with slightly more humanistic detailing and skin-tone variation in "Mother."

I also spent a bit of time on a proof on concept for a matte & metallic wallpaper treatment. The result is pretty ugly, but I think I could refine this to be something really wonderful.

More texturing.

Painted Anna up the other day and have slowly been refining her. It's so exciting to see this character go from being a smooth gray model to something that feels very fleshy and real (in the right light setup). Her textures were significantly easier than Gaston's since the her skin is basically all the same color and texture. Her hair was also a breeze because I setup the uv maps in such a way that all I had to do was draw a bunch of vertical lines. (much simpler than the 3-day mudbox-fest that was Gaston's coif).

Playing around with some really cool possibilities for the material on her shirts. The floral-satiny texture is simply an old wallpaper piped in as a spec map. Mental Ray does the rest!

Rigging

Started watching some rigging tutorials the other day and began the rig for "Anna." It's so exciting to see this character "alive" after spending so much time modeling! Here's a little taste.

Dress up!

This has been a lot of fun - began modeling the clothes for the female figure, Anna. She'll have a couple different outfits. I also have to do a gigantic billowy skirt which I presume will be no fun at all for me to model! Spent some additional time experimenting with "sheer" materials (not shown) that I think will turn out pretty cool.
It's funny how long it takes to make the little details, like placing every single diamond and jump ring for her necklace, when it's doubtful that the camera will ever get close enough to see. I'll probably take a bunch of close up glamour shots once the scene is set up to get that extra bit of satisfaction. (Also need to spend more time figuring out how to render diamonds - didn't get the kind of sparkle that I want!)