The elder rat isn’t a character that is included in the GDD, we have chosen to add him as a guide for the player, he will appear in the tutorial and explain everything. I have envisioned him as a fat rat sitting over his own belly.
I started with a subdivided cube and a reference image.
I then sculpted the mesh into the desired shape of the rat body which i later extruded its limbs from. During the process I made a mirror modifier to make sure my work is symmetrical.
The rest was me adding the desired details and making sure the topology flows well.
After making some more personal details like a nipped ear and a prosthetic leg I began to UV unwrap it so that i can begin texturing it.
I had to UV unwrap a couple of time because there was still more modelled detail i wanted to add like a moustache. After doing that I started the texturing by adding the base colours to each part of the model.
At this point I realised that I forgot to make the tail, at this point I didn’t want to UV unwrap and texture the whole thing again since it would waste time, so I just made a new mesh and made the tail a separate object. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem since I can parent them and the elder rat wont move from its position. The only problem is that the tail and main body now have separate UV images.
I’m using a basic Rigify quadruped rig to rig the rat, I don’t really need most of the bones I’m putting in the rat but I included them anyways since it would actually be longer to remove them. Having them in there doesn’t cause any problems.
Added extra bones to the simple quadruped rig by creating new bones and changing their rig type in the bone settings. I did this so that once I generate the rig the extra bones I added also generate with the rest.
I had to weight pain most of the bones I will be animating which only include the top half of the rat, since the rat will be sitting each time the player encounters them. I’m going to be animating the moustache and its head, I want to make a talking animation where the moustache wiggles a bit.
After positioning him in the desired pose I went back to add the eyes and some more detail overall.
Added an eyepatch by solidifying a plane and using a bezier curve to make the strap.
After texturing the eyepatch the model was ready for animation.