Texturing, Tiny Freckles, & Some Quick Anatomy Studies

I've been working on the rigging part of the production most of the summer so far. Rigging is the process of taking the model and making it ready for animation. This is the most difficult part of the whole process, yet, again, as God continues to bless this project, this section has also gone relatively smoothly--much easier than I expected. I have nearly completed the point weighting , which is a very substantial part of the rigging process. Then Maya started having some issues, and the file won't open without having a fatal error and crashing Maya, however, I think that the problem is due to Windows Vista's incompatibility with most software. Right now, I have my old Photoshop on the computer, so I've put a temporary hold on the rigging process and am focusing on the texturing for a pleasant change.

There are many maps to make when texturing, I started with the most obvious: the color map. Having next to no experience with texturing people, I just went at it. I started thinking too much about skin and began to look up medical anatomy stuff to learn about the veins beneath the surface of the skin. I put many of these in and then muted them down so they look like they're under the skin. If you look closely, you might be able to see a few, especially in the hands.

With the face, I remembered something I read in an illustration book at Border's years ago. The author divided the face up into thirds vertically, and labeled each one with a dominant color (top down: yellow, red, and blue). So, I applied that here. By the way, this is Nebuchadnezzar without any hair, in case you were wondering.

I went on from the veins to realize that skin has lots of tiny imperfections that give it character. I added tiny freckles all over his body, then really tiny freckles--even freckles that are lighter than the skin tone. This added so much, and I was fairly pleased, especially with the chest area here. There's a nice-looking vein on the inside edge of one of the pectoral muscles, just below the collarbone, but it's so faint now that I can't even see it most of the time. This also show's Neb's tan line. Most of this detail here won't be visible in the actual film, but this has been a great learning experience.

The hands and arms are the most crucial parts of the body to texture (other than the face, of course), and I found these a bit more difficult considering that the pair I have are very different then the ones that Nebuchadnezzar would have had, so I Googled images to find Middle-Eastern men (preferably approximately 30, like Neb in my story) and stared at their hands. This is the result. I noticed slight redness in the skin around the nail, and a slight bluish tint from the lighter flesh tone in the palm in the nails themselves.

The tough part of this for me is figuring out the balance in Nebuchadnezzar's life, between tan-producing outdoor activities and non-tan-producing indoor activities--between skin-roughening physical activities and skin-softening mental/social activities. Neb was a powerful ancient king, which demands a lot of both. Anyway, I think I was able to get at least some of that balance right. Oh, and I have found one source that suggested that his bathing rituals were basically to have slaves poor a sort of detergent rinse over him. I forgot about that, but it may make a difference in his skin.

Feel free to critique or make suggestions; it will help. Also, it's long overdue, but thanks to all of you for all of your prayers regarding this project. They truly make a difference.