MMD UNO - ONE CHIBI

UNO - ONE chibi edit


Those of you who have been kindly watching my work will probably know that I have a special interest in chibis. Probably the most well known of my chibi character is Chibi IA.

The thing about Chibi IA, more specifically her model, is that her model is 'cute', but she isn't really particularly pretty. In fact, if the truth is known, I take great pains in posing her and angling my shots so that she looks a lot prettier than she actually is. But this is a trait that she inherited from her big sister, the IA Beta model.

The IA Beta model, at least the modified version I use, can be made 'pretty' using the same techniques that I employ with Chibi IA. Which is why you will almost never see shots of them taken in profile as at certain angles, the models look rather bad. That's primarily the nature of their head. In the first place, they use a tone map that gives them that geisha doll, fish belly appearance and then the actual shape of the head in profile is rather flat. It seems to be a signature of Mqdl's earlier works as IA XS and Flower do not inherit these traits. And the same can be said for ONE, which although appearance-wise, her face is similar to IA's (since they're supposed to be sisters), but she has a new much more rounded head. Mqdl's Miku XS and Neru XS also have these traits; the Miku model is OK, but in all honestly the Neru version is downright ugly. But certainly IA XS is 'pretty', which is probably why that model of IA seems to be more popular than the original.

I took these thoughts into consideration when I set out to create a chibi verison of ONE. Chibis by there very nature are caricatures. More accurately, caricatures of caricatures since no real person has anime features, most notably the rather large heads and huge eyes. Which is why I don't understand why real woman try to make themselves look like anime characters by indulging in cosplay. Mind you, a pretty woman cosplaying as an anime character will beat the original in looks hands down. Then again the opposite is probably true too ...

The point being is that despite the fact that anime girl designs are caricatures, many are very attractive designs. Most certainly, IA and ONE falls into this category based on the numerous illustrations especially of the latter. But then transforming those 2D images into 3D models and you have a whole new set of issues. Regardless, the Mqdl IA models are popular because they look 'good' from most angles, except as I've already noted above.

The ONE chibi edit was done in three parts as I wanted to retain the 'prettiness' of the original model, but at the same time I wanted the edit to have chibi-like qualities, but not so distorted as to make it blatantly a caricature of the original. So although I did give the chibi a rather large head, it's balanced proportionally so that it looks natural. But I did make her boots larger for several reasons. The boots are a signature of the design, plus small girls with big boots look 'cute'; the boot model is darn nice. Took a bit of tweaking though to get them to work right as with most MMD models, the toes don't bend. Fitting all the components together was a little fiddly and I ended up taking out quite a few vertices. But the end result looks rights, and they work well even though some minor re-weighting was needed.

Chibi IA and Chibi Gumi were really made for picture making. They are not great motion work models even though I've used them for that purpose. Chibi ONE I decided, however, would be performance grade. Also wherein Chibi IA and Chibi Gumi were 'fattened' by reworking their torso vertices, with Chibi ONE I decided to retain most of her original form. Rather than distorting her torso, I just took stuff out, so she's a little on the thin side (a characteristic which is intrinsic in her original) compared with the other two, but that's fine as overall her proportions work and she's a lot more attactive than the other two and subtle enough to look credibly child like.

Finally, I re-did her textures. ONE has a characteristic orange-black color scheme which did not translate well to her chibi form. I was going to go pink-grey, but that's a little too reminiscent of the original Animasa petite chibi Miku. So in the end I went crimson-black and added a little heart as a motif to emphasis her more child-like nature.

Well anyway, here she is in all her glory. She looks good, poses and moves well and also takes shaders well. I've used dAdultShader for the intro picture up top primarily because that saturates her colors and gives them a rich deep quality, but for the demo video I went with G2 Shader which renders truer to her actual colors. She's retained all the facials of the original. All these work derp free (ahem), but I did not add any new ones as one of my other considerations when assembling her was to make sure that she is easy to use.


Cheers!


Note on this chibi's name:

I gave this chibi a name of its own. She's called "UNO", which means "ONE" in both Spanish and Italian. Sort of a play on the original character's name which I figured was in itself a play on the copyright owner's name:

ONE >>> 1st Place Co., Ltd. ... get it?

Besides, "UNO" looks and sounds like a Japanese name so it works well enough.


DOWNLOAD: None; ONE's Terms of Use permits editing but prohibits redistribution.
Demo video: youtu.be/nHX5BjEHzDc
Do take the time to check out her video. UNO is a performance grade model and the video shows what she can really do when in motion. She looks really nice; really pretty.

CREDITS

Original model - ONE - by Mqdl
© The 1st Place Co., Ltd.

Software used: MMD 9.26 / PMD 0.1.3.9 / Photoshop 7

Background models:

 Kerorin Town : BTA
 Alice's Stage and stage accessories : my own collection

Music : Bo Beep Bo Beep
Motion : Bo Beep (custom modified "Groovy" version)
Camera : custom

MME : Object Luminous / dAdultShader (promo pictures) / G2 Shader (video) / o_Monotone / o_ToneMap / Diffusion 7

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Version 1.0     - Feb 2015