Modeling Project: Pigsy

 Modeling Project: Pigsy

March 2021

This is my latest project, the first of many hopefully leading to a fun final product. Pigsy is their name, and they are a sentient piggy-bank set to be the main star in my developing animated short. This is my first original character built from the ground up from conceptualization to fully rigged model.

This model is a modular build, consisting of only a few simple shapes. My goal is to have it fully rigged for animation, with a list of capabilities all my own in mind. Of the many individual shapes, the main components are the body, head, legs, and head accessories. 

 

The body, probably the easiest to make, is simply a rounded balloon-looking piece that I only needed to add a coin slot on the top and a nub for a tail on the upper back end. The head was a fun task, as it really helped me understand what subdivision surface modeling could do. With only a few protrusions from a simple sphere, I was able to get the basic shape of the ears. With only a few rounds of trial and error, a simple subdivision and polishing of the polygons got me to right where I wanted to be.

The legs were a piece I wanted to be as simple as possible. I wanted the overall model to be as close to a real-life piggy bank with cartoon proportions as possible. Seeing as some piggy banks don't even have separated feet components, I opted for an easy and simple design of a barrel-like structure. I personally found the shape to be aesthetically pleasing, and it fit in the other parts of the model. After completion, I duplicated and spread out four of the limbs.

The rest of the pieces were easy to achieve with simple tweaks to primitives. The eyebrows are elongated spheres, the nose and nose barrel come from cylinders. With a few fixes to the geometry, all came together very nicely, with reasonable topology.

 

Overall , there weren't many hardships as far as modeling is concerned. I took a few liberties translating my concept art to the 3D silhouette, but overall the model is optimized as best it can be for what I am aiming for in rigging and animation down the line. Next up comes rigging, and beyond that more asset modeling and animation.