Modeling and basic rigging of a Clay Fighter-style character

In this tutorial, we are going to elaborate two characters in a scene very similar to that of Clay Fighter, a game that had its origins in Super Nintendo, in the early 90’s. Acclaimed by many, detested by others but remembered by all; a game that we remember today with this scene inspired by him, facing a sugar man (Sugar Qbe) and a kind of jelly man (Gelaton). To carry it out, we will discuss the concepts of basic 3D modelling and rigging or, what is the same, build a manipulable skeleton to pose and animate objects.

Tools

Blender 3D 2.78 or higher
Photoshop CC 2017 or higher (textures & scenario)

Referencias

Image source: http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/clay-fighter/screenshots

1. Modelling

We start with a new scene in Blender, which by default brings a cube at the point of origin of the scene. Let’s take advantage of this cube to model our Sugar Qbe character.

Pasamos a la vista frontal (tecla Numpad 1). Seleccionamos el cubo, con click derecho y, pulsamos la tecla Z for restrict the movement to the vertical axis, then press the Shift + D keys to duplicate the object and move the new one cube to the height of the upper vertices. If you have auto-snap enabled ( Shift + Tab ), the object will automatically move to the vertices, if you have the vertex adjust mode selected (see image below).

We repeat this process until we have the desired final figure:

This is the model seen in mesh mode (Z key). To select and deselect everything, press the A key.

2. Rigging

We will create the armor, skeleton or rig of the character to be able to pose it later.

To create an armor, we must:

Add a parent bone, from which the other bones will be generated (although it is entirely possible to create a skeleton with several parent bones).
Associate objects with bones.

Let’s start by adding a bone to the scene, pressing the Shift + A keys, to reveal the add objects menu, then choose Skeleton > Individual bone

With the bone selected, you can enter edit mode ( Tab key ), and, by selecting the top node, press the E key to extrude a descending bone. In this way we create the complete skeleton:

In this image we can see the almost complete skeleton. A good principle to make a humanoid skeleton is, for the arms and legs, to position them orthogonally; the arms perpendicular to the torso, and the legs aligned with the trunk.

To associate a bone with an object, we follow the following steps:

We enter Pose Mode
Select the object to associate the bone
We select the bone
Press Ctrl + P to assign the relationship and choose ‘Bone’ from the menu.

We can see the steps 2 to 4 in the following image:

If we activate the “X-ray” option on the skeleton panel, we can see the bones even when we are out of the mesh mode ( Z key ).

Finally, we will establish the current pose as the pose at rest, that is, an initial pose to which we can return after having posed the skeleton in another way. It is especially useful in animation.

With the skeleton selected, press Ctrl + A and choose “Apply pose as resting pose”.

Now we can start posing our character

As you progress, you can save the poses you like in the Pose Library.

To restore a pose, simply click on the magnifying glass icon. You must be in Perched mode to restore these poses.

It is also a good idea to rename the bones to maintain an organization that saves time.

Conclusion

To conclude, I developed the character of Gelaton and made the stage in Photoshop to complete the fight scene. The second character did not need a skeleton, just a lattice on which I made the deformations. This process will be covered in more detail in another tutorial.