3D modeling part 6

 In this part I will try to explain my process of adding color to the character. In blender it is actually not called simply adding color, but adding materials. I needed to create materials and in this case it was simply choosing the color of the material, I was not playing too much with things like how the material reflect light and so on because I wanted to keep it simple. I started by choosing the colors on the color wheel. 

This is pretty much how the material menu looks like. I have different settings to look at, for example how metallic I want the material, or how rough. I decided not to play too much with the settings and just simply pick the color from the diagram that would match my character well. This time I decided to use the lesson I have learned over the last few days when working in blender and name all of the materials I have created. 

As visible, I decided not to create too many materials. I did not want to go overboard with the color palette, just used the ones I thought were necessary. When drawing in 2D I also need to create colors for shades, but when modeling in 3D there is a light source and the shades will appear naturally when I render it. It makes it a little bit easier because I do not have to think about the shadows too much. 

I started coloring my character, firstly coloring in the areas that are all one color. 

I had to try a few different shades of the skin color and try it in the pre rendering mode to see how it looks like in the light. What I like about materials is that whenever I apply a material to a surface and I decide to change it, this material changes on all of the surfaces it is applied to, so for instance if I added the skin on the legs and arms as well and then I decided to make it darker or so, I would not have to change the color separately but just switch it once. 

This way I was adding the color to all of the volumes. 

I had to think a little bit about the hair color, not to make it too dark or too light. I finally decided on this light pink. As visible, I could not apply the color to the back and the top of the hair at the same time because they are separate shapes and I need to select the other shape to add color to it. 

When I had all the full volumes colored, I needed to add little detail, for example color the eyes or create the eyebrows. At first I was not sure how to approach that, because I only knew how to assign a material to the entire shape. I needed to do some digging online for the solution and I found that I can select faces in the edit mode and then assign a different material to the selected faces if it is on the list of materials created for the given shape. Knowing that I could start adding the little detail I had to add. 

I took a knife tool to create vertices and edges to determine the new faces I needed to color. That process I was already familiar with, but when I added color, the shapes got a little bit messy and looked like stains instead of eyes. Because of that I needed to manipulate the vertices and move them so the shapes would look at least a little bit more natural. I also needed to repeat that on the second eye as well. It took some of my time but it was not too difficult, what I needed to remember was to move the vertices only on the existing shape so they would not be too much to the front or somehow too much to the back of the eye. I had to think about the dimensions. 

One of the last elements I wanted to add were the eyebrows and eyelashes. For both of the elements I have used the knife tool and create faces for myself to add the color to.

Adding both eyebrows and eyelashes was not too difficult because those shapes have straight edges. The eyes were more difficult because they are round shapes, that made it more confusing to create just with the knife tool. 

When the character was fully colored and I was happy with it I saved the file. I try to do that as often as possible because Blender does not have autosave and I do not want to lose any of my progress. 

After coloring the character I only need to create a backdrop for it, work on the placement of the camera and the light source and I can render the images. I am very happy with the work so far. I think it looks really good.