Roger

I think I have the first bit nailed, and some idea how to hook the lower beak/jaw into the face - what I'm worried about are the corners of the beak/mouth - the part I circled in green. Not sure how exactly I'm going to get that area to be a valid patch - will probably have to be a 5 point patch I'm guessing but there are 6 points so far that make up that area.

Thats what it was - here is the head w/ closed patches.

I think I broke some patches - let me close those 5 pointers and post again.

Here's the shaded version:

I think it probably makes most sense to insert some CPs into the face corresponding to the CPS on the back of the beak (the ones on the outside, anyway, don't see a need to do it for internal ones) so that I can have something to attach it to. Not sure yet how I'm going to do it just yet so that I don't mess up what I already have. I have included a screenshot, red dots correspond to the CPs.

I'm trying to puzzle out how I'm going to attach this thing to the face - not sure what the best way to go about tying it in is. Anyone out there have thoughts about attaching noses, snouts, beaks, etc to a face when modelled separately?

Thanks I need to figure out how I'm going to attach it to the face, and maybe tweak the size of the lower beak in relation to the upper beak a bit, but thats more or less what its going to look lke. Making the lip on the front was much easier after seeing you do it, I most likely would have done the "scale the points way down" method of closing it off but this seems much more elegant.

OK - here it is, Beak Mark II:

One thing to keep in mind when modeling is to think about how it works and looks in real life. This even - nay, especially - applies to "cartoony" characters. You still want to have the basic structure of the body correct or it doesn't look quite right. When in doubt, google! Type "penguin" or "bird beak" or whatever you're looking for into a google image search and you'll find LOADS of reference pictures to help you out. I had the right shape for the cross section. I probably should have used a rotoscope as a guide, would have made adjusting the profile easier as opposed to freehanding it. I couldn't figure out how Rob did the rounded section on the front of his until I actually saw him pull extrude the 3 points that make up the righthand side and then rotate them and extrude and rotate again.

Here's an update - I ended up going with something "expedient" for the beak because it was giving me fits.

Did you do a spline that loops back around to make the beak, or did you do that some other way?

Do you recommend then doing it as 2 separate halves, then joining those together somehow?

Working on trying to finish the penguin model today - the little things that need to be added in to give life to the character. Right now I'm working on the beak. I have a wireframe and a rendered image, let me know what you think. One problem I am noticing is I am going to have to adjust the front of the beak, it almost looks like it was sliced off with a knife. I may need to add another spline or 2 so that there is more geometry that makes up the beak - it may be easier to hook into the face then. I have no clue how I'm going to do that just yet.

Never seen it. I'll have to do a search. I think I'm done for tonight - I'm fading fast and making silly mistakes with the rigging.

So - working on rigging the snail now. Any suggestions on rigging? I'm trying to keep him *super* simple. So far I am going with 4 spine bones. Was going to assign one another bone to the shell and make that a child of on of the spine bones so it follows the snail - although I probably should designate one of them the "pelvis", maybe? Thought about doing 2 bones per eye stalk so they can move around. Hope to have rigging done in no more than an hour or 2. Its a very simple character so I don't think thats too ambitious (or maybe it is).

For specular highlights to show the rest of the white of the eye will need to not appear full white. If the white of the eye has much ambiance turned on that will compete with the shiny specular highlight. That makes sense - go with more of an off-white then?

Ok - here's the shots w/ the snail texturd - not great but I'm going for more of a cartoon look. I need to get this lit and animated tonight.

I'm working on materials right now, I'll post a screenshot in a sec. I am trying to make a shiny white material for the eye and a shiny black material for the pupil - almost like a highly polished billiard ball. Have some problems, though. Anyone have any settings they recommend trying? For the white I think I am doing 255 255 255 for the ambient and difuse colors w/ 10 specular highlights - it doesn't look quite right.

Doh! adjust the shape to fit. you may want to look at a real snail pic to see how the shell sits on its back. I'd lock off the shell mesh, go to shaded wireframe mode and then push pull points on the body to fit. the 6 key constrains a CP to its "normal" so you can easily move it in or out of the mesh . Yeah, after thinking some more about it I figured there probably wasn't going to be a quick and easy way, unless I wanted it to look horrible, so I'm pulling points as we speak

I believe I have figured out why the rotate manipulator was acting oddly, I was in birdseye mode a the time and not front, top, right, etc. I'm going to work on putting eyes into the eye stalk, I don't suppose anyone has any suggestions on how to get the body to look as if its coming out of the shell naturally?

OK - I guess looking at it again its a single rotate manipulator, with one ring for each axis. But it seems like its off somehow - is there anyway to "snap" it back to the proper position? When I try to move the manipulators to line up w/ the x y and z axis, as soon as I let go it is off again.

So, I'm working on the snail again and now I have 2 rotate manipulators on him instead of just one - I'm wondering how to go about making him a single object so that I don't have to deal w/ this. It makes it a bit difficult to spin him around when modelling. I wonder if its a result of making the shell as a separate model and then importing that.

Animator needs FOOD! Will need to come back to this later...

OK, answered my own question - looks like you do need both circles, or it doesn't work right. I just sorta guessed at the grid placement, and got something that came pretty close this time. Going to slap it on the snail. And here it is:

This is what I came up with - I believe the size of my circle and the placement on the grid are the only things that are different. I used the same settings that you had input in the dialgo box.