Bones

Another new technique which everyone else seems to have used before but I was unfamiliar with was 'bones'. Not knowing what they were or what they would be used for, I just followed the tutorial that Jo gave, and worked through it to see what happened in the end.

So, to start with, I created four bones down the centre of the torso. To do this, I went to create, then systems, and simply drew the bones in, as if I were drawing a box or something similar.

I then selected each individual bone and gave it extra dimensions on all sides by selecting bone fins within the modifier panel. This then left me with bones that have fins sticking out on all sides:

I then repeated this process, adding another small bone in the neck, and a larger one for the head. I then created bones for the arms, ensuring that there was one for the shoulder, one for the bicep area and one for the forearm. This made sure that the joints were in the correct places (elbow and shoulder).

To do the leg bones, I used the side viewport. In the same way as I did the arms, I ensured that there were four bones, with a knee joint, ankle joint and toe joint. At the very end I created another very small bone which protrudes outside of the body. Presumably, this will be used to move the character, so that I have something to select.

Once all the bones had been created, all that was left was to create the hands. This is going to be a little more tricky and will be created hopefully next week. The bones at the moment look like this, and will be added to the mesh later on.

The main problem that I had completing this stage was ensuring that all of the bones were linked together correctly. I had to use the link chart in order to arrange the links in the correct order, as some were incorrectly linked. Making sure that the fins did not protrude too far either was very important, so that they were contained within the mesh.