Designing the 3D model of myself (30/9/2013)

Research:

Keen on recreating myself as a stylised character, instead of just a realistic one, I have chosen to look at some example character styles from video games and decide from there.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker:

Very exaggerated in style with big heads and small hands and feet. It's cel shaded graphics make this bright and beautiful game stand out from the bleaker more realistic titles you sometimes see. Further more, because of the big heads it allows the characters to show more expressive faces, which I love to see in animation.
The limitations of this style is of course the shortness of the limbs, thus reducing the ability to animate as much. Granted, taller characters also exist in the game, so it's not a terrible choice either.

The Walking Dead:

Looking as if its been taken from the pages of my favorite comic, of the same name, this character style is effective as not only do the faces look stylised and thus unique, but the textures look as if they have been hand drawn by artist Charlie Adlard who also drew the comics. The rest of the proportions are all humanly correct.
My only concern with this style in terms of what I want to create is its dark tones and colours. Saying this, I can always change the colour pallet and thus make it my own. 

One Piece: Pirate Warriors:

Based on the popular anime of the same name, the character models in this game look like their drawn counterparts. 'One Piece' characters are all exaggerated in some sort of way. For example, Luffy the protagonist, as seen below has a long neck and long limbs in comparison to his torso. This style works however, because its not radically out of proportion. This is also an established fashion technique as longer legs are drawn when drawing fashion models as both the clothes and the model look better that way. Also, by having long limbs your model would also have greater animation potential which is something I love to see. It also helps that the faces are a great mix of eastern animes and western cartoons, which also matches my usual art style.
If I choose such an animated style, then I may end up struggling to recreate the same amount of animation, due to my limited animation experience. Though the visual style is still very pleasing to look at and thus I may still adopt it. 

Design:

When designing myself I decided to go with my regular clothes. These include a t-shirt, waistcoat, tight trousers, converses, goggles, accessories and flat cap. That way I would recreate a more faithful rendition of myself which I would love to see in a video game anyway, and my usual style also then leans towards a model that could be placed in a steampunk genre. 

Overall I am very pleased with my drawings and am glad that I was able to adopt a number of different styles and make them my own as seen below.

Looking over all my designs I feel that I will try and recreate myself in the style of 'One Peice' as seen to the right. Although the 'Wind Waker' style, was the most popular in my group and my personal favorite to draw, I feel it will be too challenging to model the head.
'The Walking Dead' style doesn't suit the brighter colours I wear, or my happier personality, therefore using this would require too many changes. 
Overall, I feel that not only does the 'One Piece' rendition looks more like a faithful exaggeration of myself, but its pose and expression just seem to give off the most character and personalty. Granted, I still need to find a hair style that suits it better and make the flat cap bigger, as those didn't come out so well. Other than that, I am happy with the design and look forward to hopefully recreating it in 3D. 

Harvard Referencing:

• Charlie (2012) The Walking Dead is Overrated? Grow up! [Online Image]. Available at: http://finiteuniverse.com/2012/12/the-walking-dead-is-overrated-grow-up/? (Accessed: 30/9/2013).
• West, D (2013) Nintendo Confirms The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD remake for Wii U [Online Image]. Available at: http://blog.gadgethelpline.com/nintendo-confirms-legend-zelda-wind-waker-hd-remake-wii/ (Accessed: 30/9/2013).
• Unknown (Unknown) [Online Image]. Available at: http://gamer.portail.free.fr/image-one_piece_pirate_warriors-44578.html (Accessed: 30/9/2013).