Robot Dog (WIP) #1

Sketched while riding a train for a short trip through the center of France with Miss Giggles.
Been one of my favorite sketches to date. So with a bit of free time on my hands i figured i'd get him into 3D.
 
Usual tools for this one.

Sketched in pencil, then built in blender. Just basic shapes to start of with, getting the proportions as close as i could (they'll most likely change throughout). Then adding detail here and there. Some parts needed a little more imagination to get what wasn't visible from the sketch, like what the shoulder joints would entail. Managed to keep most of the original designs from the sketch. Added a few embellishments to the V6 body.

Reposed him a little to help with rigging. Then made a start on the rig. Keeping my usual habits of rigging. IK/FK switching for each limb. Hinge switches for limbs and head. Digit trickery. Layer selector and switches all being embedded into the properties panel via python scripting (salvaged and adapted from Nathan's brilliant Sintel rig). Then Gizmo shapes for everything.

Extra rigbits that'll be in this one shall be hooked splines for the wires and pipes stretching from joint to joint, pistons and hydraulics between joints, lenses for the eyes and of course the spine.

Simply modeled Spine Seg

The spine will probably get its own fist later on. As it stands now, its just an arrayed object stretched along a spline. This squashes each segment so that'll have to change. Also there'll be 4 wires traveling along the spine as well as some kinda joint between each segment. Gonna take a bit of work to get that going so i'm leaving that till a little later on.

Basic rigging is near done. Might do a bit of an animation test later. Run cycle or something like that
-Jez