The parrot model was the hardest to do. The three challenges, although it may seem obvious, were the beak, the eyes, and the hands. Let us start with the hands first
The hands were a challenge because of the uncertainty of giving the parrot feather fingers or something else. After seeing a few references for the piece, it looked like the feathers were used as fingers. The problem was that, for me, Extruding fingers as feathers was tricky. I have to first make it look like feathers and the anatomy of the hand has to be correct in order for it to be anthropomorphic, at least in my eyes. A breakthrough came when I saw another reference with a anthropomorphic bird with a talon-like hand; the skin matched the feet's skin and the fingers had talons for hands and nails. That was a relief. Now, the fingers can almost match human form. The fingers were made slightly big at the tip to make it cartoon-like.
The eyes were pesky. I was simultaneously working on these and the beak. The problem was the eyes' shape; They started out like triangles. It took a matter of using cut to add new lines on the face, and remove some vertices away from the beak so that the eyes could be separate. After fixing those, I extruded them both and it was passable.
The beak was the hardest and most annoying. The difficulty was in the shape of the upper part of the beak. Render after render, it made the parrot look more like a toucan. I got around the basic look of the break by making a diamond in the mouth area and extruding. The upper beak started to look better when I brought the reference into 3DS max using a plane and the material editor.
The hands were a challenge because of the uncertainty of giving the parrot feather fingers or something else. After seeing a few references for the piece, it looked like the feathers were used as fingers. The problem was that, for me, Extruding fingers as feathers was tricky. I have to first make it look like feathers and the anatomy of the hand has to be correct in order for it to be anthropomorphic, at least in my eyes. A breakthrough came when I saw another reference with a anthropomorphic bird with a talon-like hand; the skin matched the feet's skin and the fingers had talons for hands and nails. That was a relief. Now, the fingers can almost match human form. The fingers were made slightly big at the tip to make it cartoon-like.
The eyes were pesky. I was simultaneously working on these and the beak. The problem was the eyes' shape; They started out like triangles. It took a matter of using cut to add new lines on the face, and remove some vertices away from the beak so that the eyes could be separate. After fixing those, I extruded them both and it was passable.
The beak was the hardest and most annoying. The difficulty was in the shape of the upper part of the beak. Render after render, it made the parrot look more like a toucan. I got around the basic look of the break by making a diamond in the mouth area and extruding. The upper beak started to look better when I brought the reference into 3DS max using a plane and the material editor.