Visit Essex assignment: The seal

Starting with a basic cylinder I deleted the end caps then used the shift+move tool along the borders to create the basic body shape. At the tail end the vertices were welded together into a point and then rounded off using soft selection and editing the edges. The flippers were created with the extrude tool then the vertices edited to give a more rounded look at the extremities. At the head end the vertices were also welded into a point then pulled out to create the nose shape. Several more segments were added to create a rounder shape. The nose itself was created by bevelling the edges inwards. Using the bevel tool the polygons were inset then extruded into the head to create the mouth area, the excess polygons inside the mouth were deleted and the create tool used to join up the edges for the top and bottom of the mouth. The mouth proved to be the most difficult trying to get the shape right. Although the shape seemed to be correct, when the turbosmooth modifier was added the mouth pulled out of shape and consequently took a lot of editing to get it right. Eventually I deleted all the polygons inside of the mouth then added a shell modifier with a small outside amount followed by the turbosmooth modifier. This gave a more rounded effect to the seal in general and especially the mouth and nose. Finally I used the create line to draw out some whiskers.

Material:

Sub object mode was used to divide the seal into three parts: the eyes, the nose and the skin. The eyes were coloured black with added glossiness and specular colour, as was the nose but with different settings. The body was coloured using a cellular map with a high glossiness and slight specular highlight.