3D Energise Your Life!

[DJB MASTER]

Hi, i'm new to the forums and was just browsing. I decided to post a quick render i made a couple of months ago for my GCSE ICT Porfolio.
We had this project on healthy lifestyles called "energise your life" and i decided to make a mascot for it. I used 3DS MAX, with photoshop for the box textures. I know it's really basic but i still like it. It made me pass my exam anyway, lol!

[bobollie]

hey man,

i really like this! love the link between energising your life and the sea and sky (perhaps these were some of the techniques that you were taught, but i love em in this anyway!) also like the design of the packaging, logo left message right and centered. very nice

something i will say about any pose however is that it should always work as a silhouette. in animation the most important frames or the 'key frames', are one that really explain the character at that time. so, even if you weren't to animate, if you were to cut the figure out and fill it black, would its pose explain what he character is doing/saying?

a really basic example is the james bond intro; his walk is slow, obvious and you cannot see it defined at all, but he turns to shoot, you can get an amazing sense of action. yes he is shooting, but he is also balancing himself, widening his stance and dropping his body to the reaction. does this make any sense?

also looks like you dropped the opacity of the box for a quick 'reflection', if this is the idea it doesnt work that well. if it sint then ignore me!

very impressive hand modelling, i still cant even draw em right!

[Jelmer]

Welcome to the community and thanks for posting! You've done quite a good job, but there are a few small things you can improve, the arms for example look a bit messy with the boxes and sphere shapes, they don't really fit into each other well, maybe you should have tried to poly model them instead.

The windows logo on the bottom left seems to be stretched and doesn't fit in at all, if you could get rid of the white around it it would look much better. Finally the sky is quite well done, but it doesn't match the background very well, because you will never see clouds going on behind the horizon like that due to perspective, all the things I've mentioned are fairly easy to fix, remember that all the small details done right will improve the overall picture you're going for!

[DJB MASTER]

Thanks for your comments. Yeh i know that there are a couple of things that need correcting.

@bobollie - I used a mental ray arch material with a picture for the diffuse. Not brilliant but it gives it a bit more realism.

@Jelmer - I agree on the arms and spheres - they connect "roughly" and i think i should have used poly modelling or even just chamfered a couple of edges. The sky isnt perfect i know - i'm still perfecting my skills will terrains and landscapes.

We dont get taught 3DS MAX at school, the hardest app we are taught is Excel! This render wasn't necessary for my exam but i threw it in anyway to show off a bit of my talent.

Thanks guys.