Author: ben2020

As my character is in ww1 i need to create era appropriate additions to the model, these being a helmet and a gas mask.

Firstly i created the gas mask.

I first went into blender and added a UV Sphere, i then cut the top and bottom parts of the mesh off and bridged both faces to create flat ends to the mesh. I then extruded the top layer of vertices and shrunk them down to create the canister a the front of the mask.

I then levelled out the vertices and extruded them further back to make the rough shape of the fabric part which covers my characters face.

View of early progress mask.

Wireframe view of same image.

After this stage was finished I moved onto creating the eye holes. Firstly I added loop cuts all around the fabric area to ensure high quality if I were to move the vertices, I then I then pressed I to indent it and then right clicked and made the selected vertices a circle via the loop tool addon in blender. i then right clicked again and bridged it so that the middle vertices would attach themselves to the outer wall of the circle creating a hole which can be used for the eye holes.

Mask after the holes were created.

After this i then extruded the outer hole vertices down to cover other vertices to make it look realistic, i then extruded all of the vertices on the hole upwards to bring the circle forwards from the mask so it wasn’t all flat.

View after I extruded the vertices upwards.

Finally i cut out the back vertices to create a smooth edge to the gas mask so my characters head and face could fit inside of it. I did this by removing certain vertices and then adding faces in-between 2 other faces to create an appropriate edge for my characters face.

View after smoothing the back edges out.

Helmet

Secondly I gave my character a helmet, initially i gave him a German Stalhelm, however due to issues creating the model I gave it a a British Brodie helmet instead, this was because its an easier model to make and in my opinion looks nicer on the character.

I started out by creating a circle and filling in its face, i then extruded it downwards and outwards in the shape of the helmet and made sure to make it all even so it doesn’t look odd. I then used the bevel modifier to make sure the flick at the bottom of the helmet looks good instead of being a straight 90 degree angle.

Finished helmet with vertices visible.

After this i joined both of the meshes up into one to test how they would look when joined together.

Gas Mask and helmet joined.

Finally for the helmet and gas mask i added straps to the back so the gas mask isn’t just floating off the front of the characters face.

Mask straps with colour added foor definition.

Further Details

Once i finished with the creation of these assets i then decided to move onto detailing them so that they don’t stand out as being bad or look weird compared to everything else on the model.

I began by dynameshing the helmet so that it was smooth, this created small dents in the helmet which i decided to keep as i thought they added extra depth to the helmet.

Helmet after dynameshing.

I then started to add chips into the helmet this is so that it adds onto the dents in the helmet and adds onto realism so its not perfect, as nothing in the real world is perfect. In addition to this my characters style would not suit a clean helmet so dents and chips would be great for it.

Helmet Chip.

Helmet after weathering is complete.

I moved onto the Gas Mask after the helmet, i decided to go simple with this so i just smoothed out some of the very rough edges on the gask mask front and center.

After I added some detail to the gas mask I decided to use the pipe tool to add a pipe to the end of the gas mask. I then used the move tool to move the top parts towards the gas mask to cover up any nasty seems and then smoothed the bottom part of the pipe to stop it looking like a pipe and more like a tube that would be connected to a box.

Smoothed out Pipe on gas mask.

Name: Glendale Brooks.

Age: 26.

Country: England.

Gender: Male.

Occupation: British Army Soldier.

Backstory

Glendale Brooks was born in 1890 to a poor family in the UK. Always obsessed with the military he joined up as soon as he could. Once war broke out in 1914 he was already a respected officer and in charge of his own company. He served with distinction through many battles until 1916 when the battle of the Somme arrived.

Glendale was scared. He was already suffering from early shell shock due to the countless head injuries he has injured in 2 years of brutal all out war. During the battle they were under intense artillery fire when a shell landed directly next to Glendale and his men, killing everyone but Glendale instantly.

Severely disfigured and missing a hand and both his ears, Glendale then scourged for supplies, finding some bandages and a fire that could cauterize what was left of his hand and then cover it all up.

However after he did this he realized a lot of time has passed no fellow soldier was around, or enemy for that matter. He was alone. Glendale kept wandering, finding a dead German which he took their tunic to replace his severely burnt tunic. He found a gas mask which helped cover his burnt and broken face. His helmet, shielding his flaking head from the sun.

Glendale continued to roam the empty trenches feeding on rations and bodies or anything that was present. Never to be seen by any mortal again.