Sonic Character Study

This two-week project focused on a character study of Shadow the Hedgehog from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, utilizing Blender. It enhanced my skills in character modeling, rigging, weight painting, and animation.

Concept Art

Here is Shadow in my own stylized version of him and a few concepts designs I wanted to incorporate to certain look and feel I wanted to add to his model, especially to be for toon-ish and animated from his model alone.

Model

Initially, I used Shadow's concept art and character sheet as references for his stylized appearance. Despite technical difficulties that extended the modeling process, I learned an alternative method for character modeling. Starting with a single plane, I extruded and built his model, focusing on his head, hands, and shoes. This approach required meticulous attention to topology, particularly for his quills and face.

Surfacing and Lighting

Below, I set up a lighting system composed of three different lights to create a toon shader using RGB. This effect allowed the model to look more animated and apply a cartoonish style. In the image below, the lighting system is turned off, but the texture maps remain effective due to the nodes I set up in conjunction with the lighting system. This setup ensures the model maintains its appearance even when the lighting system is off.

Here the lighting system id turned on now using my 3 light system to create his highlights & shadows using my key, fill and backlights (RGB).

I used Blender's Texture Painting and Lighting System to achieve his desired look. I textured him using texture painting for his surfacing, which was straightforward. However, the most challenging part was ensuring his quills were evenly spaced to maintain his appearance

Rigging

Since I wanted to test out the model with various poses, what I envisioned required a more complex rig than I initially expected. Since this was extra goal for me, I decided to rig and animate him to a further extent to not only get the idea of how the model is working with the rig and typology; but as well as the learning how to rig more efficiently and how I can apply this to my models as an extra goal. As a result, I had to learn weight painting to address specific parts of the rig for the model's animation and poses.

High Poly & Low Poly Models

Here I was testing the lower poly model (left image) compared to a higher poly model (right image) comparing the subdivisions. I transferred and tested the rig to see if the rig would work using the higher poly model and scanning through typology.

Test Animations & Poses Renders

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