3D Character Development- Charne

Character Development: Charne ('strong but feminine')

The brief for this character design was to create a stylised bipedal character suitable for rigging and character performance. Students were given limitations, such as avoiding loose garments like skirts and dresses, to make their character suitable for a beginner rig. It was also important to create a character whose backstory and design were relevant to the local South African space.

My goal was to create a character that challenged gender stereotypes and diversified the representation of women in media.

Character Description

Occupation: High schooler and apprentice for her dad, an auto mechanic

Nationality: South African (Cape Town)

Age: 15

Character Hook: She is an auto mechanic in training and dreams of inventing a hovercraft that uses renewable energy to bring wealth to her financially struggling family, but her small physique makes it difficult for her live up to her big dreams.

Theme: Determination

3D Production Pipeline

Once the preproduction phase was complete, I began the journey of bringing Charne to life in 3D. Firstly, I box-modelled my character in Autodesk Maya using my orthographic drawings as guidelines. 

 The next step was to texture her in Substance Painter and surface her in Autodesk Maya. This was my favourite part of the pipeline; I chose to push myself and blended aspects of semi-realism, pop art and the well-known Borderlands style to create a new, unique visual style which can be seen in the close-up shots above. 

 After texturing and surfacing, I had to rig my character. This was personally the most challenging part of the process for me as Charne's large hands and feet were difficult to achieve clean deformations on. 

 Finally, I created a workshop environment for my character portrait, which was lit using Arnold in Autodesk Maya and composited in Adobe After Effects (the process for this can be viewed at the top of this page).