Mechanical Marvel - First stages of Modelling

Mechanical Marvel - First stages of Modelling

I now have a finished final Photoshop concept piece and need to begin modelling. Firstly, I needed to get a base for my model and did so by using the basic primitive polygons such as the cube, sphere and cylinder. In addition to these tools I used some curve polygons such as a basic circle and more. After setting my project settings and all the basic necessities I took a basic cube and using the scale, rotate and extrude tools, I created a lower body base that I thought resembled my Photoshop piece well. 

That was where I started, here is where I ended (the lower body base I created)

I am at an ideal start but I needed to exclude all the extra and unnecessary parts that don't serve a purpose in the model in terms of functionality. So what I did about this was move onto the next limbs on the model which are the legs. How I did this was by creating another cube polygon and shifting the vertex's until I was happy with the outcome. Here are the results of that... 

The majority of the leg is the same polygon just duplicated multiple times and had alterations in terms of size, angle, and placement. As much as 90% of the work for the leg is done, there were no talons to hold and support the weight of the leg. So how I went about adding those was taking the top section of the leg and then duplicating that and then decreasing the width of it. 

Once I had a leg I was happy with that resembled my concept piece all I did was highlight and select the entire first leg and then mirror that onto the other side of the lower body.After I grouped and combined all of those polygons together to minimize issues later onward. 

The screenshot above shows a completed basic model of the lower body of my Mecha/Robot. Later on in the creative process I'll add minor details to give it a little more realism and some general aesthetics but for now, that'll do. The next step is to connect the lower and upper bodies together, however I need to include some animation within this too. How? My idea was to have a ball-joint that connects the two segments together and this would allow for the upper body to rotate and look around.

Not only would this serve as a binding of the two segments but also this would account for the animation expected of us later on. How I have done this is firstly by comparing this too my concept piece so I know where and what needs to be there for this too look and work as it should.

I tried to make sure I was keeping along the same lines with my model and making sure I wasn't straying too far from the look of my concept piece. Although I did encounter some challenges such as having no orthographic drawings to model from, I was literally modelling from this perspective the entire time. So I had to remove a lot of unwanted parts that were simply pointless being there...

Here is what I didn't bother/wanted to include into my Maya model...

Not only were these unappealing to look at but in terms of realism and functionality they serve no purpose at all. In addition to that, I would've spent if not wasted time modelling parts that aren't useful toward the design at all. Although I did make a fair few alterations towards the actual design itself, I did my best to stay along the same lines throughout this creative process.