Character Model: Tian

Tian is a seven-year-old girl who lives in a spirit realm. When she was an infant, she was abandoned at the doorstep of a kind, elderly forest spirit, who adopted her and raised her. Together, they run a café towards the edge of town.

Tian is a character I designed based on my favorite characters from Studio Ghibli films and my younger sister. I wanted her to look cartoon-ish and cute, and I wanted her character to come across as energetic and bright. Before I began modeling, I made a few simple sketches in Procreate and Photoshop to develop her character design:

The second drawing shows her with her "grandmother."

All assets were modeled in Maya. Tian's head and body were modeled separately and later stitched together. Her eyeballs are separate geometry, and her hair is made with additional geometry and hair cards. The way her clothing lies is based off a cloth simulation.

The individual components were then textured in Mudbox.

Finally, I created a basic rig to pose Tian in the same position I drew in my original concept sketches.

In the future, I would like to create more complex rigs and put Tian into some environments from her world.