This is one of the few fun modelling stuff In between other scenes, that was good enough to work this out further. I try to keep it simple.
It will be a render for making a christmas card. I have to work on it in tempo. Painting in the bushes grass and such was to much “weight”
I will do a lot in photoshop as good as i can. Will do go for texturing as many as possible, and what i am capable of what i know by now.
Making the gnome.
shaping body and or clothes. Most of it will turn into clothes, only parts of body you’ll see as neck and partial arms wich come out
of the sleeves. Screenshot mesh, and testrender with light and environment, for different look at the shape
basic texture eyes. Buttons on jacket. More work to do on clothing. Needs beard, moustage and hat later on. Last testrender for the sunday evening CET
I don’t think im gonna make it before next midweek. To much trouble and work. Not being a pro as in the profile pic, maybe in posting stuff 
but certainly not in the modelling biz.
Making hair had me spend a day to figure out how to get it on the face at all. Mistakes, doing over again so on. Now the beard just be ok, for the
render i take in the end. Details wont be visible that much in final image size. Although i have to work on the eyebrows more, i do not know how
to add more new curves to the existing hair system. ( using Maya ) Maybe editting the curves , stretching them a bit.
did a bit better. Its a wild beard, living in the wild. There are a few hair curves growing into nose. Edit or delete a few. Improving on eyes too
all day busy. Hard time to get a bunch of leaves to cover the forest floor a bit. Must been doing something wrong with texturing and transparency
on a simple plane. Then i made a maple leave with curves, turned it into polygon shape, textured it. 3 different color shades for variation. I did
work on the eyes of the gnome. They are better now. Iris in nthe eye was to small, enlarged it and changed color to darker.
I was playing with photons from the latern pointlight as well. plus a lot of adjustments with light itself . Still not perfect.
Rendered the first group of leaves, to see how colors work under the lights. I want to have the leaves falling down but not much time left.
I think i do the hands and the walking stick first and some detail on his head/face.
working late again. 4-5 hours sleep and then go to work. Almost there. Tomerrow must be get to a finish. Here 2 Screenshots , one of the scene
wireframe and second wire/shaded. I modelled the hands, walking stick and a handle for the latern. Added some ferns
I got this collision working with a bunch of maple leaves falling down on the surface. Made mistakes with grouping and asigning gravity solvers.
I figured out how to let the leaves fall seperatly. At a zillion polygons and 200 frames it takes a lot of time to have one pass through.
But i have to quit now, it is 1:30 AM here, i do one test render before to bed at 2:00
Best way to learn is the hard way, believe it or not. i always did
Testrender 18 min. The light is nice, good enough me thinks for a merry chrismass wishing to family and friends. But comments are welcome.
if time permits ( thats 2 days ) i maybe can do adustments.
The gnome stands one the surface, as do lay the presents in front of him. But then it looks like it is not connecting solid on the floor, and presents
do look separated as well. I’ll trick this out when having the leaves covering the forest floor. Collision is with all objects apart from gnome, presents
and latern. To be continued…
Its done. I forgot to enable shadows on the pointlight from latern. I made collision ( ncloth) with two groups of leaves, the rest was just
way to many for reasonable render time. There are some things not as they should be, but i think in general the image
gives a nice feel. No time left. I took it into photoshop, for some light adjusting, added texture on presents, and text ( in dutch )
Hope you like it.
Have a nice christmas, and a happy new year.
