Anime: Takahashi-style head

[Gaijin]

Greetings!

 

Well, I finally stepped away from my mechanical modeling background and took a stab at the Katakata tutorial for making an anime head - this one is Takahashi's onnaRanma from Ranma 1/2. I'm posting it here for feedback - this is the first attempt at a non-mechanical mesh I've done in A:M, so feedback and useful pointers are more than welcome.

 

My initial thought is that I'm probably a little spline-heavy (typical Shurtleff-style overkill in action yet again). I had a bit of a problem with creasing to start, but I think I've managed to get rid of most of it.

 

One major compromise I've made in trying to implement Takahashi's style is with the eyes. I've pretty much given up trying to duplicate the vertical cylindrical shape Takahashi always employed - I figure a partially rounded vertical cross section won't detract that much from the overall look, and doing so allows me to use distorted spheres instead of open cylinders - which should hopefully make the eventual eye movement animating a bit easier to do.

 

Anywhos - here's a couple of screenshots of the WIP to date. Comments, please.

 

Front:

 

Side:

[higginsdj]

Nice model indeed. I don't think it's spline heavy but I am not too familiar with Anime facial animation.

 

Now for the Anime hair

 

Cheers

[Rodney]

Wow Mark. You are really off to a great start.

I like her.

 

You should have been working on characters a long time ago!

[KenH]

Looking good. You may have trouble around the corner of the mouth when animating. I'd advise you take a look at Colins tutorial and see how he's laid out the splines. Or some of the models on the cd.

Keep at it!

 

PS Right at the side of the head, you have some dead end splines making up a 4 point patch. I would continue them through to meet each other. Unless they're going to be covered by hair....maybe so.

[Gaijin]

Looking good. You may have trouble around the corner of the mouth when animating.

Yup - I was thinking the same thing. I've also realized that the eyelids - not to mention the eye sockets - need more work in order to animate properly, as I'll need a minimum of three spline arcs to properly follow the stretched surface of the eyeball on a blink.

 

PS Right at the side of the head, you have some dead end splines making up a 4 point patch. I would continue them through to meet each other. Unless they're going to be covered by hair....maybe so.

... and here I was trying to cut down the overall number of splines.

 

Ouside of the ear, a Takahashi-style head is rather full of hair, so I was going to use that to cover up some of the minor modeling sins. The main reason I posted this was just exaclty for the type of comments you made about the mouth. Thanks!