Modelling the Toy

Now that my storyboard and animatic has been set up and now start modelling out my character. First I took reference photos of my toy to help model it.

I put these photos into Maya and started modelling. I started out with a cube and began changing the vertexes to match the toys shape. I then used other cubes for the ears, arms and feet, altering them to the shape of the photos.

This was my first attempt at modeeling out my toy, unfortunately it doesn't fit the toys parameters perfectly as I had not made my reference photos the right size, however I feel that it is close enough to the toy it doesn't matter. Here I have placed a simple colored bevel on my model, the final one will have a UV texture over it.

I made a UV map of my model by grouping it all together, I then made points across the back of the model and locked them in place. I then 'unraveled' the model to produce a flat shape, which was my UV map. This was very difficult for me and I required help in doing it.

I created a texture map for my toy, however when rendered it came out stretched out. I remedied this by making the details of the texture more narrow.

 

This came out a lot better.

While modelling my toy, I also tried making a model for my background.

I used simple spheres for the hills and a plain for the ground. I was originally going to use another plain for the sky but decided against that and decided to place a background in after effects.