Ortho head #2

This is a rendering of the head that I made in order to clean up inconsistencies in previous head designs appearing in orthographic designs for the whole Zaku in preparation for building the actual head part. I had done one of these before, but I decided to make a new one in order to incorporate changes I’d made experimentally while creating the Blender model. The main difference is that v2 is two milimeters longer from the end of the snout to the back of the head than v1 was: otherwise the two head designs are pretty much the same.

Summary

This is, in a sense, the first “final” design in the project, in the sense that it’s a design I drew up and then immediately used to build a part. Other plans have been done with the expectation of further review and revision. My designs for the head have varied a bit in the different places where I’ve drawn it, as I tried to capture various aspects that I thought I saw in the lineart. The end result is a little more “moderate”, perhaps, than my initial impressions of the design – slightly less sleek and less pronounced in certain features, somewhat closer to the “standard” Zaku head proportions – and there are times when I wonder if I should’ve tried to make the head’s features more distinctive and pronounced. However, looking at the best references I have for the head I think my design is very much in line with how the head is represented in those references. At worst, perhaps, I think my design may be a bit too rounded at the middle and back of the head – perhaps meaning the head is not long enough front-to-back. The Zaku Kai head minimizes the impression of width with its length, and if I start to feel that the “egg shape” of the head’s top view is too pronounced, I may lengthen the head later to compensate.