Digital Skilling - Organic Modeling Using Maya

My main focus within the digital skilling module is to further my development of direction and story techniques. However, I also want to be able to tailor this interest to 3D Animation. A crucial aspect of 3D Animation is modeling. Without modeling there would be nothing to see within a film, video game etc. I have previously used Maya to model an interior layout, but the creation of that set involved creation all man made objects, and was created quite crudely, using only Maya's base shapes. Within this part of the module I have been able to practice organic modeling. The organic model I have been creating is various parts of the human anatomy. The below pictures show my progression.

The above three images show the first thing I modeled; a cartoon man. This character was created using box modeling. A cylinder was created then extruded and tweaked in order to created the basic shape of the man. I created several different versions of the character, and I believe the last of the three is the best example of the ones I created.

I had previously made a basic version of the characters head while making the full body model. The above images show a more detailed version of the character's face. Whereas the body was made using box modeling, the face was created using flat planes whose edges are then extruded to create the structure of the face.

The above two images were created in a similar style to my previous head models. The main difference in that this face model was based upon a more realistic version of the human head. After I had created the face model, I built upon this to create a whole human head (pictured below). I used a model of a skull as a base to my model, helping me give the head the right human structure.

 

The ear model was created using planes, similar to the facial model. After I had created the whole ear as a flat piece, I extruded parts of it back on itself in order to create the different depths to the human ear. The hand model was created using box modeling, in a similar way to how I created the full model of the cartoon man. Parts of the box were extruded to create the four fingers and thumb.