New Thing: Gloomhaven Vermling Scout

I've published my Vermling Scout model for Gloomhaven!  This is another model that I made following Zacharias Reinhardt's methods, which I really enjoyed using.  To make the model, I started with some basic subdivided cubes and stretched them out so that they would be the right size and very general shapes for the major parts of the body: head, torso, hips, 3 parts of the arm, and 4 parts of the leg (since the Vermling has a reverse articulated leg, otherwise it would be 3 parts as well).

With those basic body parts in place, I then made some basic props as well: a cloak with a cowl and the two daggers.  Then, I started adding details to the pieces.  I played around with some basic poses, trying to get a feel for the overall shape of the model and, once that was in place, I began the process of sculpting.

Sculpting the Vermling was generally done by using the Crease tool to make lots of fur.  I turned up the strength of the tool, and used ctrl to invert it to draw out a line, then used the normal crease function around the edges to make it stand out further.  With that technique, it was a bit arduous but not overly difficult to make a furred body for the character.

As I worked on it, I realized that I was going to have to take some creative liberties with the original artwork.  The real character has a furry body and is wearing a furry tunic under a furry cloak.  Maybe some day my modelling skills will be good enough to differentiate 3 distinct kinds of fur on a single model, but today is not that day.  So, to keep the whole thing from becoming a furry mess, I decided to make the cloak with more of a cloth texture, and I'm really happy with how it came together.

Cloth texturing is interesting and I wish that I could explain my process.  I'm certainly not the best at it, but I can at least do a passable job at modelling cloth capes/clothing and it's mostly done through trial and error.  I use the Clay Strips brush (with Dyntopo enabled) to draw lines onto the material that roughly go along with how I think the material should have folds.  I then smooth them over and draw more, alternating between drawing new strips and smoothing things out until I start to get folds that look natural.  Once that happens, I switch over to the Crease tool and start accentuating those folds, making he low spots lower and bringing up some of the high spots where I want a sharp crease.  I wish I had some system that I followed, because then I could both write about it and be confident that I could pull it off again!  Hopefully that'll come with more practice...

Well, after I finished sculpting on the details, I cloned the arm and leg and then did some work on the pose.  My initial pose had the upper dagger in a defensive position and the lower dagger pointed forward, but my wife pointed out that, due to the lower hand's proximity to the model's waist, it looked a bit lewd, so I found a new pose ;)  I'm actually happier with this new one anyway, as it strikes a good fighting balance with having guards in both a low and high position.

After I got the pose worked out, I realized that I'd completely forgotten to make a tail!  Fortunately, that was really easy to add on.  I used the same basic technique as on my Giant Viper model, but this one was even easier.  I added the nurbs path and moved it around until I had a good tail shape.  Then, I made a bit of tail geometry (I decided to go with that segmented cartoon style rat tail so that it would have some sort of texture) and used the Array and Curve modifiers to put that geometry onto the nurbs path.  Instead of converting the arrayed object to a mesh and manipulating it (like I did to taper the Viper), I modified the metadata on my nurbs path to accomplish the same thing.

I turned on proportional edit (press o) and then adjusted my area of effect (press g and scroll the mouse wheel, then esc to not actually move anything) so that it would cover most of the tail.  I then selected the end of the nurbs path that corresponded to the tip of the tail and pressed alt-s to scale it down.  Doing it this way let me keep things very dynamic, as I could still pose the tail through the nurbs path and allow the array modifier to make more segments as needed (or remove them) so that it could follow the path accurately.

With the model posed and the tail built, I just added a cube beneath the model and used a Boolean Difference to cut off the bottom of the feat/tail at a nice flat plain.  Then, it was a matter of exporting it to Meshmixer where I could work on the supports, and then printing off a bunch of them before game night!