Weeks 5 - 9

Well I know we're supposed to keep this thing updated every week but blah, I'm here now so let's get this over with. Since Directed Study week I have had my character planned and how I'm going to do it, it was just getting round to do it for real. It was only by Week 7/8 that I finished modelling my character and rigging it; and also creating the backgrounds and adding textures.
While modelling my character I had problems with the way everything extruded and was very rigid and a too simple version of what I wanted. So, I spent a while adding in more joints and edge loops to create a more realistic bend (seeing as my character is going to be bent over most of the time this is kinda useful!) I added these in particular around the elbows, knees and torso as that is where the magic will be happening. The next thing I did was fill the torso out a bit more, give my character a bit of a stomach to make him more human (well, it IS a humanoid figure). I had trouble with the head as it looked too much like E.T and I don't like E.T so it had to go. I found a side profile of a head online in Google Images and adding it to a plane, sculpted the head from the side and it now does look much more like a human head.
As for the background I used a number of planes and just added textures on top. All my textures were found on Google Images. For the fence, I started off with a normal plane, then to make the points I cut the top third, extruded, selected the top vertices and centered them, creating a point. I then duplicated that along til I had a substantial fence.
I have also been doing research into depressed stances and the best example I could find were Mr Incredible at the beginning of 'The Incredibles' when he is terribly unsatisfied with his job and has the weight of the world on his shoulders. My other best example was Marvin the Manically Depressed Robot from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Both these characters move slowly and will be a great reference point for when I start animating, which will be this week (Week 10). I plan to have this animation in the bag by Week 11 and then tweak and render for the hand-in date.
Toodles.