Finally, I get a chance to start on the TKD Guy project. The whole idea behind this project is to model a Tae Kwon Do studio and a character who is learning Tae Kwon Do but with a bit of a twist. I intend for the character, and any others that may be part of the scene, to look like the wooden art mannequins. The idea is inspired, both by an art mannequin I have as well as my experiences learning Tae Kwon Do and taking class with many children. I think it will be a fun project. My intention is to not only model the character and the environment, I also hope to animate it all.
I expect, that this will likely take much longer than I anticipate, and you may be reading about if for quite a while. I think I need to revisit some animation tutorials and I’m not sure what else. I have not doubt I will get to learn a lot with this. Wow, animating a
figure and not just a camera. That should be something. And I really want to add a mirror but I thing that is going to cause the render times to really skyrocket. I cringe to think how long this may take to render. And I am really getting ahead of myself.
I did a little research a few months ago. I checked with my Tae Kwon Do Master, who runs the school, to find out how big the Dojang is. I wanted to use realistic dimensions. I didn’t want to make it unreasonable large, or unrealistically too small. Though now that I have
been in a couple of other schools, I can see there is a lot of variation. Still is was something close to the dimensions of my school that I have chosen to work with. I have also agreed to the enthusiastic recommendation of the son of a friend, the son is also a student at the school, that I include a pole or post, more like a vertical steel beam, in the model. I didn’t take the measurements of the pole, I made a rough guess and hope I am close.
So what I have modeled or started so far is the Dojang. I have the walls up, a ground, a primitive to represent the mat, and the pole. I have cut out the entrance and the two windows in the wall that we enter through. In general, all theses pieces started as boxes. For the wall with the windows and opening I added some edge loops do that I could then remove the faces to create the openings. Once I did this I had to close the gaps between the two sides of the walls. For this I used the edge selection option and then bridged the two
faces. I also used the setting I found when I was working on the dishes scene. That is the view setting that shows me the normals orientation. I was really glad to see that I got that right.
I have not added any lights to the scene at this point. I think they would be sort of and 
annoyance. At the moment I think I am better off to use the default light until I know what I will want or need. And until the modeling moves into the finer details. For now though ,here is what I have.
Once I got that done I decided that as this is meant to be an animation of characters and not just a great rendering of a Tae Kwon Do studio, I should probably get started on modeling my student character.
I found one of my mannequins so that I could be sure to get all the main pieces right. And I blocked it in. If I were using paper and pencil this would be just drawing the rough shape of the bits and then using those later to refine the look. In this case I blocked the shape in by using primitives and placing them in the basic configuration so as to look like the mannequin, once I have made significant adjustments. Mostly I am starting with spheres and cylinders, though the foot is just a box. There are slots in the joint pieces so I
suspect I will end up adding them as I get farther along. I paid no attention to scale for the moment. I just wanted to get the bits accounted for and then as I start shaping them I will adjust their relative size and position.
I have also chosen to try to use the mirror feature again. I have only blocked in one arm and one leg. I am hoping to be able to model one of each and then use a copy with a mirror option to create the other one. I am starting to figure out how to work at least a little
smarter, I hope. And here is as far as I have gotten.
As I looked at my mannequin and then at the rough block in of the same on the screen, I started to really grasp the size of the task that I have set myself. Because the Dojang feels large and sparse I had thought that it was mostly a matter of building a box and making some openings and not too much to it. On top of that, in my mind, all I am doing is adding a character, maybe two, to the room and they are just basic mannequins so the modeling seems quite simple. I now realize that it is not going to be as simple as it appears. At least I was aware that the animation part was going to be huge work.