Modeling the hair (13/1/2014)

* Today I was planning to use the lecturer's online tutorial on how to make a Simpson's head and the same book I took out last week in order to try and model my stylised head better. 

Unfortunately, at this late a stage I  recognise that I do not have the time to do my intended style, especially since the lecturer wanted us to be animating by now. 

I am incredibly disappointed by this and it was caused by me not having the correct resources available this year. However, on the plus side I will be able to mention this in my final evaluation, where I will be able to explain the differences between my original concept and the one I ended up with.

* Instead of doing the above I decided to go back over my original model and work on the hair today using the following steps...

First I highlighted the polygons on the head that matched roughly to my photos hair cut. Doing so I then used 'Detach' to separate it, making sure it was a clone. Thus if I made any mistakes on the hair I could fix them more easily. 

 

I then attempted the hair in numerous ways. I first tried to make good use of the book only for its example hair to either be dread locks, alien or far too detailed for my current level. Then I tried to see if the lecturer had a tutorial on Moodle, but he didn't. I then used Youtube and found some videos that made the hair look great, but would need a lot more time analysing the process and discovering new things from myself. 

Therefore, I went with a far more simple approach using an abridged version of one of the easier Youtube tutorials.
Ignoring the cut out hair I made a plane and made the middle of it pointed. Then I copied and layered it over the head numerous times. Sadly, however it didn't come out as well as I hoped it would, since my 3D ended up looking like a porcupine.

I also tried another technique I saw a friend doing in order to see which one worked best for me.
Extruding inwards the lines within the cut out hair, I then made it black so as to be distinctly different to the head.

Unsure of this technique, I went back to the previous one in which my lecturer said that it was possible, but I had to do it in bigger layers. Therefore he showed me the way he would do it as seen below.

I then followed up from where he left off by trying to do the back of the head. Unfortunately this was far more difficult than I thought it would be and just looked odd whenever I tried to make it look natural.

Something I noticed, and that the lecturer also pointed out was, that if I merely copied each layer of the hair then it would look less realistic and more obviously duplicated.

Therefore, I hope to pick up from where I left during the next session. 

*Hopefully next week we will be looking at some example rigging which I am looking forward to as the animation side of things is what I have most been looking forward to doing.