Pikachu Model (really could use feedback.)

I just have the mesh for now. Once I finish with that I’l move on to rigging.
Its very simple right now, so any Ideas on how to make it look more believable would be great.






The basic shapes are really letting you down here. Pikachu is much rounder than you have him; your version seems emaciated in comparison. The feet also need work; Pikachu’s feet are very rabbit-like with 3 defined leg segments, while your feet are just forward pointing blobs. Take a really close look at his Smash Bros model, I think this could look much better with only a few quick tweaks.

It’s too long and the texture is off. Its tail is brown at the base and the stripes on its back is incomplete.

Believable as in more photo-realistic? or closer to the cartoon?

Closer to the cartoon.

I’d second everything TidyPachyderm said. The body is also overly long, that’s your call if you want to do it that way, but even the face looks stretched out. Like the model is scaled vertically. Also, a wireframe would be helpful to give more focused critique (something about the way the legs are extruded looks a little weird, but I can’t tell if it due to bad topo or just verts that need to be re-arranged and smoothed out).






Hears the wire frames of the original. I accidentally broke one of my rules and applied the subsurf to soon, so unfortunately the poly count is very high(2286).

This is the same model but with a few scale adjustments, and a few tweaks to the legs to make them a little smoother.




Well the brighter colour looks much better but the legs are still all wrong. I think you might want to start again from scratch, or remove most of your edge loops (none of those loops on his stomach are doing anything). Pikachus legs have joints and specific forms. I’ve attached an image showing a really quick sketch of what his leg anatomy looks like. Also note that this model from Brawl has both defined fingers and toes, which you’d want on any model of this polycount. Oh and his tail needs to have sharper edges; it is supposed to be shaped like a lightning bolt.

I was wondering are you trying to use this for a game or an animation? Also currently if you have made the model and sub-surf modified it, add a few edge loops around the tail to keep the shape of the lightning bolt. And also the edges going along the armpit should be pulled down more to give the arm a more round shape possibly on the top to. Ears to. But over all not bad.

I’m not really making this for anything but practice PCM, I may use it in a later project thow.
I will probably start over in the same blend file so i can use my old one as a reference.

Any one have a recommendation on how to make textures? I kinda cheated on this one and used a wallpaper. And I have an idea on how I want the texture to look. I just have no idea on how to make it?

Thanks every one for the critiques!:smiley: Il post here again when ive got something new!

Well Pikachu’s simple enough on the surface that texture should be pretty straightforward; In fact what you have right now as a material is the best looking part. The eyes need a brown iris line and the dark spots on his ears and back should be slightly ragged to suggest furryness (again, see the reference image I posted) and the tail is brown at the start, not the end like you have it. I also think the mouth could be softer looking, it looks more like a line drawn on with a sharpie than an actual fold in his face.

Really the best way to make the textures would be to pull your unwrap into an image editor and draw there, on a cartoonish model you’ll want the controlled lines you can more easily get when painting on a 2D plane instead of painting in the 3d window. You’ll want to do the whole body as one texture image; right now it looks like parts of his colouring like his stripes are just differently colored polygons; there’s no need to do this if you are going to unwrap any part of him as it just wastes geometry.

I don’t know what you plan to render it in, but if you are going to use blender I suggest maybe trying a velvet shader in cycles, or something with very prominent rim lighting; Pikachu’s soft edged, rounded look is a large part of his appeal and I think finding that will be more important than any texture map to having him look right.