Getting back to work now that the christmas frenzy is over…  I’ve decided to have the gondolier in a singing pose to give him an extra bit of character, and went ahead and posed his face before the geometry gets too complex.

Managed to finished up the base mesh for the entire character.  Next, it’s finally time to start subdividing and bring out the secondary forms and tertiary details.  The project is progressing a bit slower than I’d like due to the holidays fast approaching, but I’ll try to keep the updates regular.

After getting a little more reference and making a few more sketches of what I wanted the gondolier’s face to look like – I finally reached a basemesh I’m fairly happy with.  Looks a little more Italian, looks a little more stylized, and looks more interesting.  I’m now batting around the idea of having him in a singing pose for the final image… so we’ll see how that goes. 
(Lesson learned:  Don’t model without some sort of concept sketch or reference to help get the idea out of your head first.)

I’m gonna be taking a few days off to go for a snowboarding trip, so no updates for the next couple of days.

Spent some time today refining the topology and overall structure of the Gondoliers face.  I’m still not 100% happy with the look I’m getting… cant quite put my finger on whats bothering me – might have to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Worked out the general proportions and edge flow of the Gondolier’s face today.  Still a bit more work to be done on the eyes and neck before it’s ready to serve as the base mesh and be sculpted into a high-res sculpt with ZBrush.

Blocked in the general proportions of the Gondolier today.  I cant express how much having ANY type of a sketch to use as a guide helps speed up the entire modeling process.  Doesn’t matter how crappy the sketch is – just having the general concept down on paper has really helped.

Here’s a quick character concept sketch I drew to help clarify my vision of the character.
Just from looking at the sketch, you’ll quickly realize why I’m not looking to work as a concept artist…

Heres a few pictures of the finished Gondola model.  Moving on to modeling the character now.

I’ve been building this Gondola over the past week.   Even though it’s not an actual part of the character, I think it’ll help the overall design if the character has a ’set-piece’ for him to stand on and interact with.  A few more details left to put in here and there, and then I’m moving on to modeling the actual character next.

I’m working on a project I’ve titled “The Venetian Gondolier”.  I was inspired to model a character based on some of the things I saw during my time backpacking Europe this summer.  Seeing the Gondoliers in Venice made a lasting impression on me, so I’m going to try to express that through this model.

I’m going for a highly sylized character look on this one – really exaggerated proportions – small head, short torso, huge arms, long legs, etc.  Think Sylvain Chomet’s ‘Triplets of Belleville’.