Use of Basic Shapes - Donkey Kong

For this project I was tasked with selecting a character from Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64. We were told to select a character and use basic shapes in order to characterize them purely by their shape language and proportions.

I decided for this project to do Donkey Kong for no other reason other than that I was wearing a Donkey Kong shirt that day. I used a reference of Donkey Kong I found from the movie and then broke it down into basic shapes. This was the reference I used.

Using that reference, I made a 3D model in Blender using basic shapes of Donkey Kong holding some barrels over his head like he's going to throw them towards the camera.

Front View

Side View

 

3 Quarter View

After talking with my instructor, Nick, he told me that I should make the lightning and shading more noticeable, I did this by cranking up the specular on the model and darkening the colors, rendering again and getting these as the result.

Finally I used these new models with the higher specular to do a paint over in some sections that I didn't think popped enough and got this model sheet as my final result.