My first Studio Ghibli film I watched when I was a kid. Going to do a diorama of Totoro and the girls at the bus station. Im going to attempt to do Maya hair and fur for Totoro instead of model it all.
HCR MINI-Challenge #42: Goodbye Ghibli - My Neighbor Totoro
LarryKameen
#4
Little bit of tweaking around plus an umbrella and his leaf. Going to start the girls soon.
LarryKameen
#5
Started Low Poly of Mei today! shes turning out pretty good so far I think. Should get a more finished base mesh by the end of today.
LarryKameen
#6
Decided to work on her sister instead of polishing Mei up a bit. Blocking out Satsuki. Basically took Mei’s base mesh and changed the proportions of it all around, Figured since they are sisters the similarities between the meshes would transfer nicely over to the scene.
LarryKameen
#8
Thanks Boone!!
Pretty slow day of working on this. Pushed Satsuki a little more. Threw her into Maya to see what the smoothing looked like. Turning out pretty okay I think.
The test was of an earlier version of the model.
LarryKameen
#9
Couldn’t stop working. Added some eye brows and eye lids though they are hard to see as well as tweaked some other stuff. I’m actually having trouble getting a good silhouette or her face since she was drawn so differently in every angle. This I think is pretty close, plus the clothing and hair will drive her character home. Shoes and clothing are going to get more refined next. BPR render. 
LarryKameen
#10
working on the pose of Mei on the back of Satsuki’s back. Im using the TPoseMesh plugin in ZBrush to work on the pose. Im going back in to resculpt the mesh since I dont need to worry about any animation.
I also realized that the scale of Totoro I was working with was WAY too small. I dont know how I didnt realize that but I scaled him up and changed all his Fur inputs to correlate. No photo of that though.
I think Im gunna test out Ptex for this project for the girls and environment. Freedom from UVs sounds fantastic haha.
LarryKameen
#11
Keep on pushing! Ill start on the environment soon, give me a break from modeling the characters a bit. Im not too concerned with pushing Mei further because shes covered by a raincoat and her face is down. Satsuki I’m a little more concerned with because she is such a focal point. Ill see how I feel when I put some texture on her, nothing too major since shell be so far away from the camera. Totoro is pretty much done. I still have plenty of time to work on this if I need any major changes. But Im going to say lighting and rendering will take me the longest to do on this project.
strychnine
#12
nice work on a pose 
Satsuki looks imho too straight though - if she’s having Mei on her back she should have more bent posture. And I’d do something with Mei’s arms, so she would hold to Satsuki more.
LarryKameen
#13
Hey strychnine! I agree with you on th pose, everything feels really stiff. I think I need to put her in a stance where from the side she looks like she’s actually trying to balance something because right now her legs are straight vertical and then a bend at the waist. For Mei it’s a little more tricky because in the scene she is totally asleep and her arms looks like they hang at her sides and not over and part of Satsuki. I’m trying to stay at true to the animation as possible but theres a lot to still tweak!
LarryKameen
#14
Im just going to call the pose done so I can move on to the environment. Quick test render for sense of scale and composition!
LarryKameen
#15
Snaps, I moved my photos around I’ll have to repost them or figure something else out. Didn’t realize that would happen. Sorry everyone!
LarryKameen
#18
Okay started paint today. the girls look ghostly pale, I’m trying out a Mudbox to Maya Ptex workflow for this one. The colors look a lot more saturated than when I’m painting in Mudbox. But freedom from UVs is so great, I feel like I’m missing something because its so simplistic!
LarryKameen
#19
Man gone from the site for a few days and come back to see all the great entries PLUS even more!! Great job everyone! Everyone really has some fantastic work!
So I’ve started on the backdrop for the scene. Trees textured in ZBrush and the grass is simple paint effects. I plan on creating a few layers of vegetation as is in the photo I’m referencing. The lighting in the scene is still heavy WIP and set up to give off good idea of what the characters look like modeled and textured. There are some lighting settings that will be final but for the most part it still needs to be tweaked.
Also on the side, has anyone encountered an error when rendering “fatal error - attempting to save in blah blah blah”? Its happened to me a few times and I cant really figure it out other than it might be too big of texture files??