Avatar stages

I tried out some targat lighting and mr.sky lightning to see what best highlighted the avatars features. The mr.sky lighting turned out to be too bright. I also lost some of the detail in the face when I changed to this lighting.

Matching the head to the body. So far so good.

I had to create my own hair from a sphere instead of using the hair and fur application as I don't have 3ds max at home (mac.) I liked the way it turned out as it unites the cartoony body and the slightly more realistic face.

Started off with extruding and making kinks in the hair.

I made the eye with 3 spheres. I would've liked it to have been more realistic but it work with the other features.
I made the face out of cloning the polygons and using the background pictures as references.

http://www.secondpicture.com/tutorials/3d/3d_modeling_of_a_human_head_3ds_max_01.html

My avatar so far

So far the hardest part about recreating myself as an avatar is getting the curves right but all was fixed after hours of frustration. I ended up recreating all of the hoody as there was too much geography within the jacket. I created the boobs the same way I created the hoody. I used the polygon and extrude tool and gradually altered the direction of the polygons to create a subtle curve.
The pink hoody is teh original that I am going to get rid of.

Updating ideas

I was really inspired after jool's lecture last tuesday when he was talking about bringing different issues of society (the recession etc) into your essay. It got me thinking about what part I play in this and what ways I contibute to the recession in teh future. As a designer it will bring me challenges such as budget, energy etc. My main thouht was how we are all controlled by money and teh government. If our money lessens we start panicking. Most people in this world are judged by the items they own therefore how much money they have. This is where the avatar hand comes in to represent us loosing control, being grabbed by forces outside of our control. I thought the hand could grab my avatar as part of my animation? Maybe the teh avatar fighting back? 

My avatar. She may seem simple but I choose the simple hoody because so many people can associate themselves with it. Also it makes my facial features stand out therefore showing that the eyes, our view and understanding of the world is more important than what we own. And of course (on an aesthetic level) i put my favourite grey jeans into the design.

I have developed the idea of my travelling flash game. I want to make it into a pirates map where you pick up clues such as personal mind maps, photos, ethnic object etc to get an idea of my identity,

These are my final designs I am going to work with for my logo. At the moment the sunshine logo is my favourite not just because it is aesthetically pleasing but because I think the shape and text represent my personality. I choose curvy, flowing text because I see myself as a flowing person. I didn't mean for the background shape to look like a sun at first. It is just the shape i see myself as a continuous, flowing shape with the up and downs of the rays.

I also like this design but it isn't as aesthetically pleasing as I had hoped. I thought the person was a good idea as it would seem like i was introducing the name of my company...

I have asked some people which design they have prefered so far the sun and flowing text is the clear favourite.

3D Max Experimentation

I found recreating the figure a lot easier this time but I have been working on making it a lot more detailed. I want the figure to look feminine and resemble my figure. My first go above looks rubbish. I thought it might be easier to extrude the area and then bevel it but it looked more like another shape slapped on top of it rather than natural curves. so I tried....

Altering the vertexes to make a breast but they didn't look much better. They just look like little lumps.

I ended up moving onto the shape of the bum. It looked a lot better but it was too curved and in your face. It doesn't look right because my avatar will be wearing a hoody that will cover some of that detail.

Plus there was little lumps that I am going to have to even out. I have made the thigh area slightly more curvy as well to make it feminine.

I am going to spend a lot of time making it look feminine because I think it is an important part of my individuality and it will look even more striking because the avatar will be wearing a black/ green hoody and jeans so that a lot of people can identity with the avatar. Also the plain clothes will make the eyes, hair etc stand out more to send people a subtle message.