3D Collaboration
Early October, I saw a post by a certain chicdead26 in Ko-fi Discord Server, "collaboration" channel. Here is the post, albeit in archived form:
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| Inciting incident |
At this point I wanted to explore art collaboration because I did not have luck with getting commission work. It may sound strange, but I wanted to work on something with input from another person.
So I replied to the post, expressing my interest. Perhaps partly on a whim. To my surprise, ChicDead26 was responsive. Soon we were talking via Discord Direct Messages. We agreed to work on a 3D model for the witch depicted in "Broom Ride!".
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| The character we were to work on (the witch, not the star nor the cat) |
I quickly found out that ChicDead26 was dead serious! I was just suggesting, "Oh, shall I maybe draw T pose turn around of the character?" and he already got a base mesh! Not only that, he asked many good questions about the character appearance since he only got the image above as reference. So I answered as well as I could and started drawing a character turnaround sheet.
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| First attempt at character turnaround sheet |
I started by drawing the rightmost figure to get myself familiar with the character. I drew "Broom Ride" seven months ago; it has been a while. Plus, I have not thought of her hairstyle without the hat.
Next, I drew the front view. I struggled with accurate drawing. Then I proceeded to drawing the side view... and I really struggled to make sure elements are consistent in the 2 views. I probably made her profile too complicated; but at the time I did not realize that I should simplify. My mindset was still in stylized drawing land, not technical drawing for character sheet land.
Did I say that ChicDead26 was dead serious? Well, he was. He already got the base mesh to the correct proportion after I sent him the turnaround sheet, so I had the chance to amend my drawing. The body shape was too boyish in the front view; so I made the amendments below.
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| Amended character turnaround sheet |
I felt bad enough about the head that I drew a turnaround sheet for the head. ChicDead more or less ignored it; but I have to show that at least I did some work (even if it was not used), right?
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| Head turnaround sheet |
I was concerned about the head shape of the 3D model, so I drew another one more straight to the point.
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| Highlighting part of the head I was concerned about |
So ChicDead26, being dead serious, amended the model and I was happy.
Probably you saw from the drawings that I also had the hat in mind. Well, ChicDead26 countered with a simpler idea of a conic hat that he would rig to deform, so we went with that. It was a time-saving move on hindsight. A good thing I did not insist on modeling the complicated hat, lol.
And so, after around a week, the 3D mesh was completed; then after 4 days, the UVs were ready. It was time for me to paint the textures. I had to admit I was worried because I usually work slowly, while ChicDead26 worked fast. Thankfully rigging a whole character was enough to occupy him while I wrestled with Blender UI and tried to paint some textures.
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| Unable to comply, texturing in progress |
I did make use of this opportunity to learn the software. I enjoyed using Blender texture painting. It needs some getting used to; but I realized that it was possible for me to exclusively use Blender texture painting to create stylized textures (and never need to move to Photoshop). I also re-learned the hard way that texturing crisp geometric shapes was a pain.
Back to the collaboration, I took around 12 days to work on the textures (and the result was somewhat simple). Meanwhile, ChicDead26 was already posing the character to recreate the pose in the "Broom Ride" painting. He even set up the lighting and rotating camera. All I did was... made the lighting brighter with rim light. And here is the result.
I was happy with this collaboration and the outcome. On reflection while writing this post, I am even happier with the outcome. Seriously, ChicDead26 worked fast; creating a 3D model from scratch in 1 month. I wish you all the best, man!
You can find ChicDead26 on his socials:
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