Resub 4 - modelling

I have been working on a 3D model for the Developed Project, and as always with 3D models, I've encountered multiple hurdles, which I'll try to describe here:

I did several rough sketch concepts of the character first, some of which are seen here: 

note: the developed project follows the Red vs Blue, here personified by the red and blue lumberjack vests of the two players.

I modeled out the character using primitives and extrusions, but was unsure which bits should be 'combine' into the model, and which should be taken directly from the original mesh. This gave a few issues later with rigging and skinning.

I unwrapped the model as best I could, this time using several different mappings - I unwrapped the legs as cylinders first, then tried stitching them together with the cylinder from the torso, but I could not get that to work, so I believe I in the end just unwrapped everything as one cylinder, and then cut the legs open. The 'combined' teeth were textured apart, as were the eyes and eyebrows.

I was quite happy with the skin, and with bumb mapping it looked quite decent I thought, at least for what is supposed to be a footsoldier in the final game. I had some problems with texturing the eyeball, as trying for a spherical mapping made the eye ellipsical. I usually just map it as a plane, and after researching online found that this was something that was actually done - I was worried that the iris on the back of the eyeball would cause problems later, but perhaps not.

Rigging has always given me a lot of issues as I have never really learned how to do it. I started out with his, knees and feet, then mirrored the joints while including one joint for the mouth and one for the head (the mouth would then hinge the entirety of the head), but I soon had to change this as the legs gave all sorts of issues, and I realized I needed more joints for the head controls. I went to work using the weight painting tool, but I never really got it to work: I remembered reading that the influence value would not go above 1, and so I could not understand the issues I was facing until I read that it was possible to go beyond this value if certain parameters were set - which they were.

After fixing this by flooding the vertices, I realized the eyes needed bones of their own, and so I needed to unbind the skin again.

To be continued...