Printed Model

This is my printed model of my character. It's still in progress so there is allot of detail missing but at the stage it's at now, I have to say I am happy with it. The only thing that went wrong was that the tail broke off due to it being too long. Even though this wouldn't effect my model in Maya, I think I will reduce the length of the tail so it fits the character a little better.

Maya

So its time to start modelling!

I'm using a tutorial I had from a while back to start of my model 

This is the upper torso of my model so far in Maya. I think it's going well but my only concern so far is that because I have made the body lean forward slightly at the hips, when it comes to rigging later, there may be a issue, but I will carry on for now and change it if need be.

Finalization

I have decided for this to be the final of my character and am now choosing to move forward towards the modelling of her. I feel that  I like this characters look and if anything else needs be added, I can during the process of modelling.

I drew these to use as a reference for when i'm modelling in Maya. I have tried to put my character into the correct pose of how I think she would stand but I'm not sure wether or not It will cause issues later or not. We will see!

Concepts

From what's come into my mind so far, I very much like the idea of Pocahontas Billiams being a monkey but I thought, why not try go through a few others ideas before I hit a conclusion.

I was trying to think how I could merge a few ideas together into one here by having a girl who pretty much acts walks and talks like a gorilla but also has a few tiny characteristics of one, such as the snout like nose and big bushy hair like the character Blanka from street fighter but it didn't really work because it was simply not thought about and to be honest, boring. So I have kinda started to look back at the idea of her being a monkey as it has more options in my opinion.

I have been going through ideas and have tried compiling and creating concept ideas for Pocahontas. I very much like my top idea of her being a monkey that wants to be a gorilla as I have added a fur hat and jacket that will be grey to try and imitate the look and feel of a gorilla, as the colour of a monkey that normally comes into mind is brown. The grey jacket will have silver tape on the back to show she is trying to imitate a silver back gorilla. As well as this, she will have a very calmed look to her as she tries to imitate the gorillas mood and attitude. Just like when you find a person from one culture that sounds like another culture because of them either being around that culture so much or just out of wanting to be like them.

Trip to London 2

Here I was just having a few more looks at there environment to see if I could gather any more ideas. One thing I did notice was that there were a lot of greys, greens and browns. Many earth tones which kinda gives me a idea of the pallet for my characters colours.

I like this picture ^ because of the posing of the monkey. I think when it comes to concepts I will try and imitate something like it.

Trip to London Zoo

This is the first creature I encountered as I ventured into the zoo. If I remember correctly It was a lemur, If not it was in very close relation. I really liked this as the way they moved and sat down had a lot of personality to it without needing anything else. You could see the hyper monkeys as well as a select few that were chilled and relaxed. The main one that caught my eye was the leader in my opinion as it was just looking over the entire pack making sure no one was causing to much trouble even though it started playing with the other monkeys soon after. The way it lazed about before hand, has really inspired me for my character to be a monkey of some sort.

I then went on to find the gorillas. This one had a baby holding onto it's stomach and was just generally relaxed. compared to the monkeys before, these gorillas were moving in slow motion and didn't really care about doing anything in the slightest. It was almost like they were opposites in the prim-ape world

Monkeys: hyper, small, fast, lack of attention to anything

Gorilla: mellow, large, slow, paying enormousness attention to everything.

I think I have an idea! Monkey who wants to be a Gorilla!

Blanka from Street Fighter

Blanka from street fighter also comes into mind as a inspiration as he is very much gorilla based in design but a hybrid almost of a gorilla, the incredible hulk and a pure beast. I think in relation to my design of character, she wont be any were as aggressive as him but i like some features such as the long hair rough spiky hair on his head.