Turn Arounds!for

Newbie Character Creators

In this tutorial, we are going to talk about the first step in 3D Character creation, for those just starting out.

It is called, a turn around. Even 3D artists start with good old fashioned drawings, and you thought you wouldn't need those skills? Think again!

A good turn around is at very least a Front View of the character, and a Side View of the character.This gives a 3D modeler all the information they need to start building a character in 3DS Max, Maya, or another 3D software.

A turn around can be done for a characters head, body, or both at once. I prefer to break things down into smaller bites.We'll start with a character's head.

What does a turn around look like? Well, like this.

A finished turn around will have all the bells and whistles like hair, clothing, armor, etc. In a studio they will give you something fully and artistically complete. In fact, these days they might even just hand you a single piece of concept art and tell you to get to work. Many studios, especially in the game industry still use these turn arounds so that the 3D modeler can do their jobs without missing bits of information.

Lets remove the hair and start simply. You can always add in the extras once the basic components of a character have been met.

If you don't have a straight edge, go get one... you can't have a good turn around without making sure that both the front and side views of the character match!

To do this, we will draw the front image of our character first.

Then, we will draw some thin lines using a straight edge from key points on our characters face across the page to the other side where we are going to put the second drawing.

Things like the top of a head, the point of a chin, the top and bottom of the ears, the top and bottom of the eyes, lips, and where a nose ends. We will then use these guidelines when we draw the second version of our character. The side view.

Draw the side view so that the same points on a characters face match up to the guidelines, and to the front view drawings of our character.

Notice below where the guidelines lead us to, and how we match the things like the top of her head, point of her chin, etc. as close as you can get them.

Eureka! We have a finished turnaround of a characters head.

All that is left is to add the details, like her hair etc.

Now... What about the body!

While most characters faces are fairly symmetrical and the guidelines match up with little to no problem, the body can be a little more guesswork than exactness.

You can however, still get some good points on a body to match up using the same technique as we used for our character's faces.

Let's start by drawing the front view of our characters body.

Again, like with the head, we draw guide lines from specific points on the body that need to match up to the side view.

And finally we draw the second image, our side view, to match up with those key points on the body using the guidelines as ... well ... guides!

Again, notice where the points on the bodies match up.

Your turn around is complete!

Add color and detail if you wish, but now you are ready to split the images up, put them in your 3D software, and model away!