Just got out the Sculpey and modeled the next head.
She is a beautiful girl, who models for a figure-drawing course. She works with the old teacher, shown above.

She is baking right now. Yum, polymers!
This working off real-world maquettes has been an interesting addition to my workflow... & I think it will add a different flavour to the final character designs.

I'll post when there is more progress.

Well, worked on the girl all morning, and here she is so far...
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Now with ears!
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Okay, threw on some quick hair & now I'm off to other job to earn some money.
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She's not all the way there; she needs eyebrows, eye lashes, and some makeup. And the hair is too severe. It needs to be more fun, if we're going to sell the idea that she is beautiful. (At least in the world of the film.)

I like where your going with this.

I don't know that the hair is severe so much as the hairline in this iteration. If you pull it forward a little (maybe even give her a head band where the hair currently stops) it seems that she'd look a good bit younger. And yes, *any* character looks creepy without eyebrows. Nice direction and good contrast to the old man character!

I'm going to fix the hair - she looks very spinster/soccer-mom (is that combination even possible?!) I'm about to add her eye-brows and round out her features. Yay.

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Latest incarnation. I'm less happy with the hair colour/style, still experimenting.

Thats graet ,I wish I could draw like that then bring them to life ,wonderfull stuff

Alright, looking less inhuman... and younger
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I'm finally happy with this one for now. What a difference from the original!
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Next character is the main character, he is a young guy, maybe 18-19(?) kinda awkward and hormonal...
I'll pick up some more Sculpey tomorrow and work out his face in 3d
After I get everyone's heads modeled, I'll start on the bodies. This keeps me interested.

I also got rid of her Klingon-forehead. Its amazing though, how the eyes being made more realistic really brings the character to life!

-Thanks for the settings-

-She's coming along very nicely, I just think her bottom lip is a bit sharp..

Just for kicks, here is her wire-frame.
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Looking better and better and yes the eyes have it

The female character is looking great! I was also worried about that Schnoz, though.

Everyone models so good! Very nice work.

Started modeling the girl's body...this is mainly a low-res colliding object for her clothing.
The plan is to bake basic cloth sims into smart-skin so there is no need to simulate after animating.
The setup time for the rig will be longer, but each sim will only have to be run once per joint-region per character, saving time in the long run, and even better - allowing real-time feedback when posing the characters.
(A similar work-flow was used for "Meet The Robinsons.")
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The same technique will also be used on the old art instructor, and the other guy.

I keep track of this topic.

I would very much like to see how thats done ,the cloth thing I mean ,sounds like a nice idea

It will only work with semi-form-fitting clothing... loose, flowing clothes are not good candidates. I shall run simulations moving various joints, and then copy/paste the simulation data into a smart-skin that corresponds to the motion. I'll start a topic with a step-by-step when I get to the rigging part.

That's a pretty cool idea Jesse.

Here's the girl with her body/clothes so far. I'm not happy with the top yet; I hate modeling clothing.
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mtpeak2, I'm glad you like the clothing baking idea, we'll see how well it translates to this production

Pretty much done with this character.
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Some specialized rigging/simulation baking will be done on the clothing, but that will be later.

Ahhh...she dances too! Luvely.

Thats looking sweet ,I like the clothes

Jesse

I have been looking at this thread and was wondering if you could post a settings on the cloth. I am struggling with clothing of a character. I like this idea. I have rigged the character already with the squetch rig and was trying to make the clothing a littel nicer than what I have achieved so far.

Steve

Nice work going on in here, Jesse!

Okay, tonight I started rigging her face. I opted for a simple bones rig with null controls that I designed from researching various face setups on the internet. The lower half is done, mostly. I'll post some face movement tests later once I have the rest of her face rigged. (Oh yes, that reminds me, she needs some teeth, too. )

Here's a shot of the bones that control the lower half of her face; I also changed her hair and added teeth.
The face rig I used is really flexible, all bones constrained to nulls with translate-to and kinematic constraints with scale to reach turned ON.
(FACE is too complex for what I need, and this is more cartoony) I was excited that I didn't have to do too much weighting either. Yet.
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Built the rest of my flexing face rig...each Null on the face "stretches" the area in between itself and its connecting Nulls. It was designed as well to allow for cartoony squashing and stretching. I can build higher level poses for common actions if production needs call for it later.
The next challenge will be in seeing how well this scales to my other characters (I designed it to be easy-fitting.)
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This disgusted expression is fun to use for testing.

That looks a complicated face settup ,but by the looks of it you got everything coverd.Would like to see a tut or a inside veiw of that settup .I just use poses and need to get the skinn moving more

I have never built a flexing face for my gang, it will iinteresting to watch how your do your. looks realy good frosteternal

Nulls act as the control "handles" I placed a null at each point I want to control. Then I added bones to model how they are connected to each other. The bones are *not* parented to anything except the main rig Null. The chin null controls a bone for the lower jaw thru a kinematic constraint.
I created a pose t hide all geometry bones for easy of animation.
The other pose does 3 things -
1) Assigns all bone bases to their corresponding nulls via translate-to constraints.
2) Assigns each bone to it's connecting null via Kinematic constraint - this is KEY - the "Scale to Reach" option in the constraint is turned ON (Except for lip bones, which it is turned on, but so is "scale Z axis only")
3) Aims the jaw at the jaw controller, and influences a null that parents the mouth corners, and one that parents the lower lip, to open lips with jaw. (This makes everything so much more fluid for posing the mouth.)

The nice thing is I get "stretchy" skin movement for "free", as the bones are assigned along splines (due to careful face modeling in the design stage.) If I adjust the corner of the lips, the skin stretching to the cheek moves accordingly. The whole thing in practice works very similarly to magnet mode for sculpting, but controlled by bone influences. I like the fluid nature of the whole thing, with the stretchy bones =)

Whew. I hope that gives you the basics.

(Blinks and eye direction control I want to add via poses.)

Thank's a lot for explaining that ,it seems a bit complex for me at the moment but I will try to set this up in my model, as it looks and sounds like the perfect face control.Very nice work

Very neat, Jesse - I shall have to try this - it reminds me of, I believe something that the Soulcage? folks did.

I like how you have rigged the geometry. Simple. Intuitive. Are the nulls a flat hierarchy as well?

One could also build on this concept to build "stop staring type" poses from what you've done, and then build on that a FACE-like control setup (which drives the poses) - so that one could control the limits, extremes of the geometry bones so that they don't distort the face in ugly, unwanted ways.

But not really necessary. I just find I can get into trouble while animating - if directly manipulating geometry bones - but it doesn't stop me.

Thanks Nancy!
Yes, the control nulls are non-nested, and move independently (except for the lower lip which is affected by the jaw/chin.)
If one wanted, they could build FACE-like controls, but I was trying to avoid the extra layer of interface. I just want a fast, predictable way to sculpt facial expressions on-the-fly.
I'm moving on to the other characters next when I get home from classes.