In this tutorial, I’m taking you through how I made this PlayStation one style character. It’s got different overlapping sections, which is the way many of the PlayStation 1 models were created. And it’s something that’s relatively straightforward to produce. So, it’s suitable for relatively newcomers to Blender who’ve got a little bit of experience with things like the mirror modifier, adding loop cuts, and so forth. If you’re not quite there yet, then do check out my complete beginner’s guide. And if you like this sort of content and you want to make more detailed characters, then do check out the different courses you can see here. Links for these are all in the description. So, let’s get started making this cool looking PlayStation 1 character. So, I’m in a new startup file. I’m in Blender 4.5.3 and I’ve got my screencast keys down the bottom here so you can see what I’m clicking. Now, I’ll use the default cube to create my models. But before we start, let’s bring in a reference image. Here’s the reference image that I’m using and you can take a screenshot here or you can download it from my Gumroad link in the description and you can click and drag your references into your scene. So find the file, click and drag,
[00:01:00] bring it in like so. Now in Blender, it’s at a strange angle which is actually perpendicular to the viewport as I brought it in. We need to press AltG to remove any movement. So G being the movement button and alt R to remove any rotation. And that will put it right back in the center here. So, I’ll zoom in a touch and let’s press RX90 to rotate it round so we can see the front view. And let’s go to front view with one on my numpad or you can use the cartisian coordinates up the top here. And I want to position that at the front here. So, the front view is right in the center. Now, it’s hard to position at the moment because we can’t see the grid in the background and we’ve got the cube in the way. I’ll press Alt Z and that will take me to X-ray mode or that’s X-ray mode just up here. And now I can see through the cube at least. But I need to sort my background image so I can see it more easily. So, with the background selected, I can go down to this icon down the bottom here, the object data properties. Click on that and tick the opacity. That way, I can start to see my grid. And I can, in fact, bring it down to something like 2. So, we can see it much more clearly. Now, I can zoom in a bit and G to grab
[00:02:00] and move it right in the center there. So, we’ve got the middle of the character following that middle line there. So, that’s front view all set up. If I go round to perspective view here, I want to bring it backwards slightly. So, G then Y. so I can model in front of it. I also want the side image set up here. So with this selected, shift D to duplicate. And I’ve got a duplicate just here. But I’ll right click so I don’t move it anywhere. And I’ll press R Z 90 to rotate it around. So now I’ve got two reference images here. I can go to side view with three on my numpad. Remember you got the cartisian coordinates if you need to use those. And I can move this G then Y into position. So again, I can model in front of my references. And G then X to move it off to the side here. So I can model in this space here with my references. When I press one, I can get the reference to the front. And three, this is on my numpad. I can see my side view. So let’s click on the cube now and start modeling the character. I go to front view and scale this down. And we’ll start with the head. So G then zed. Most people start with the head. Often it’s actually better to start with
[00:03:00] the chest, but most people feel more comfortable starting with the head. So I’ll scale it right down so it’s a similar width at least. Now I’m noticing my character isn’t quite in the center. So I’ll select the background. G. Then X. Let’s move that across really slightly. And that looks a little bit more accurate. Doesn’t have to be perfect. Click on my cube again, and we need to start editing the shape of the cube. Now, you can do this without a mirror modifier, but because it’s symmetrical, it does make much more sense to use a mirror modifier in this case. So, I’ll go into edit mode with tab. That’s edit mode up the top here, and create a cut down the middle. So, CtrlR will create a loop cut. Left click once to set the loop cut, and left click again to set the position. And you can see I’ve got a loop cut through the middle of my cube. I can now go to face mode with three on my keyboard or face mode up here. Select half of my shape and press delete and then faces. So I’ve got half of my cube. I can then go to the modifiers down here. Add modifier. Start typing in mirror and select the mirror. And you can see I’ve got the other half of the cube the other side there. Remember I’m in X-ray mode. I can turn that off at any moment to see my cube more clearly. But it’s helpful to
[00:04:01] model within X-ray mode so we can see the background. I’ll go back to front view. And it might help if I turn on the on cage as it’s known, which will show the results in edit mode. So you can see the other half, but I’ll just be modifying this half. I’ll turn clipping on as well. That will mean it will stay attached in the middle here. And I’ll go to vertex mode. So that’s vertx mode up here. And box select the vertices. I box select. So I make sure I select the back one as well. And then I can press G to grab and start moving these into position. So I’ll bring that down for the chin here. Obviously, I need more topology around here. So I can press Ctrl+R to do a loop cut. It’s not going all the way around until I actually double left click to set it in place because we’re only modeling on this half. I can bring this across now. Perhaps bring this one in a little bit more now. And we can just slowly build up with another loop cut here. So, control R loop cut. Then bring this one across. And perhaps another one here. And we can kind of bring it up for the cheekbones there. So, we got the shape from the front here. Maybe a little bit down there. Let’s go to side view now. So, we’re in completely the wrong place for side view. So, I can go back into object mode for this. So, tab back into
[00:05:00] object mode. So, object mode up here. G, then Y, bring that forward and bring it into the middle there. Then back into edit mode with tab and start modifying the shape again. So, I can bring these in, bring these ones out, these ones in for the neck, these ones out, and I can select all these and rotate them. So, we got roughly the shape there, but it’s very kind of square and flat at the front. So, let’s add a loop cut down the middle here. Then, I can select all the way from here down to the bottom. So I can hold down control, select that, and then GG to slide these along like this, and then GG to slide them back into the middle. It’s not quite the right shape, but it’s much closer. Same for these ones here. From here, controll-click the bottom one. GG to slide across, and GG to slide back again. Let’s go to side view again, and then start modifying the shape a little bit so it matches up with the reference. That’s not too bad. Let’s go to front view and see what we’ve got. Probably these back ones here look a little bit out. So, we can bring those out for the neck. Does take a little bit of sorting
[00:06:01] out and figuring out certain positions. I can bring these up. So, I can bring an ear out from there. And these ones can come down a little bit. And we’ve got a relatively good head shape there. Now, it’s time for some extrusions. So, if I come around to the bottom, let’s extrude out for the neck. So, extrusions are usually done in face mode. So, three to go to face mode. That’s face mode up here. And I can select this bottom face. And the keyboard shortcut is E to extrude. And I can bring that down like so. Probably best to be in front view for this. And I’ll bring that down to somewhere around here. So we can overlap what will be the body in the end. Let’s go around to side view and look at the face there. I’ll scale it up a bit and bring it backwards. And it’s going to overlap the body here. Now you can up the detail by ctr and do a loop cut and then probably bring this one in a little bit like so. Again, you can go to front view to get the right size there. And you can always make this a little bit more curved just by doing a loop cut down the middle. But I’m going to keep it simple and cancel that. So we’ve got a nice simple shape there. The last thing for the head then is to work on the nose and the ear. So if I go to side
[00:07:00] view, we can see the nose extrudes out this way. Now you can do this fairly simply just by doing a loop cut around here and then bringing this shape out. But it is a little bit awkward the way it sits in here. So I’ll undo that. So what I’ll do instead is do a loop cut around the middle here. And then I can start shaping the nose by bringing these in and then extrude this face out. So three to go to face mode. this face just here. We can extrude it out with E to extrude. Scale it down. Bring that down as a nose there. Scale in the X. Bring that in. And we’ve got a very simple nose. Let’s go to side view and actually line that up a bit better. And I’m changing across to vertex mode and face mode every now and again just to tidy things up. And let’s do a little bit of tidying up just here. Rounding out these areas. And you can adjust the shape to your liking. Again, you can add some more detail going into face mode and I to insert a face this time. And then you can do more loop cuts across here. And then you can easily set up a shape for the eyes if you want to. Again, I’m going to undo that because that’s more
[00:08:01] complicated than we need to be. Lastly though, you might want an ear. So again, round to side view. We want an ear coming out of here. So these two here, I to insert like this. E to extrude. And we got a very basic ear there. Just go to front view and move some of these vertices. So we got more of an ear shape. That’s the one at the back there. Probably a little bit too pointy. So, I’ll just bring those down a little bit. Like so. Okay. So, there’s the finished head. Alt Z to come out of X-ray mode. And we’ve got a very basic face just there. Now, you can do some adjustments in sculpt mode if you like, if you know what you’re doing there. Or you can just keep going in and modifying the shape slightly by moving vertices if you feel you need to. Remember to smooth out areas. You can select a row of vertices and GG to edge slide. And that kind of smooths it out. It’s
[00:09:00] quite effective for that. And there we go. We’ve got a nice head shape. Actually, I’ll just do the front as well. Now, the rest of the body is much easier than this. So, let’s go to front view. I’ll press shift rightclick to move my 3D cursor into this position. Shift A to add mesh and then Q. Add that in. Scale it down. And a similar scenario to what we did with the head. We’ll do a mirror modifier. So, into edit mode, CtrlR down the middle. Double leftclick to make sure that’s in place. Just double check it’s there as well. And then alt Z to go to X-ray. Three to go to face mode. And select that side there. And delete. And then faces. Now we can go across to our modifier, add modifier, and mirror. I’ll go to front view. start lining things up. I’ll do a loop cut first. Move these up a little bit. Move those across slightly. Ctrl R to do a loop cut here so we’re ready for that arm socket there. These can scale down. Oh, I haven’t turned clipping on. Notice that they shift apart here. I’ll turn the on cage on so you can see that mistake
[00:10:00] there. So, I’ll select these middle ones, scale X0, so they flatten out, and press enter. And then turn clipping on and G then X to move them both together so they stick. Another loop. Cut around here. And bring these ones in. And these ones can come in as well to this point here. Then let’s go to side view and line up with side view. Let’s go back to object mode. Move that forward. So G then Y. And then start shifting these around so they’re ready. So they match up. Looks like we’re going to need some more loop cuts in here just to make this a little more circular. So from here to here, GG and GG to curve that around a bit. And this one from here to here as well. GG and GG. Got a little bit more curve there. Let’s go back and move these into position. I’ll scale these down. Move those into position. And we’ve got a relatively good torso there. Back to front view. Now, for the trunk section, it’s probably better to do a new piece of geometry. You can just extrude out and have it all as one piece if you want, but PlayStation one graphics tended to have big blocky pieces. And in fact, probably slightly less detailed than
[00:11:00] this. It depends on which particular era of the PlayStation one. So again, shift right click, move my 3D cursor into position, add in a cube, scale it down, cut it in half, delete half, add a mirror modifier, and start moving these into position again. Let’s go to side view, back to object mode, move that into position there. Back to edit mode, and start editing the shape. It’s particularly blocky. I did forget again to turn on clipping. So, let’s select those and then G then X to move those together so they stick. And you might want to smooth things out by adding a loop cut and moving these across. But again, we’re keeping it relatively simple. You might want a loop cut in here to kind of build the shape of their bum. And even another one if you want to build the shape of the hips, but again, it depends how detailed you want to go. So, we’re building up the shape relatively slowly. It’s not matching up particularly well with this one. So I can do a loop cut in here and then move these across with the GG
[00:12:01] command so they match up a bit better. And let’s match these up a little bit better here as well. Okay, let’s just see what we got. And we got some very simple shapes there for our character. Just tidy up where you need to. And we’re doing well. Okay, so let’s think about the arms. There’s a couple of ways of doing this. If you’re not too worried about the polygons and you just kind of want to get a nicel looking character, then you can put some icospheres in for the shoulder, that usually works a bit better. Or you can just use a cube that’s extended out. I’ll do it the simple way. So, shift right click to move my 3D cursor. Shift A to add mesh and then cube. Scale that down. Scale in the Z and then rotate it round. And you can see I’m slowly matching up with the arm there. Let’s go to side view and just see where the arm is. So, I need to rotate it backwards slightly so it kind of sticks out the back correctly. I’ve drawn the arms towards the back of the model so it’s easy to model the arms and easy to rig as well. And then let’s go into edit mode and see what we can do to smarten up the shape. Face mode. Scale this up. Make sure it overlaps nicely like so. Might want to loop cut in here.
[00:13:00] Again, it’s one of those things with PlayStation graphics. They were very simplistic. So, you might want to keep that traditional look, but I’m going to just select this edge here. Move it up. Move this one back. And let’s scale down the end face here a bit so it kind of matches the arm a little bit more. And from here, I can just duplicate this one. So, let’s go around to side view. Shift D to duplicate. Looks like I need to rotate it around into position. And this one, I’ll go into edit mode and just move this back. And you could even have an extra loot cut in here. Scale it up a little bit just so it looks like a little bit more form. And for my forearm here, let’s go to front view. Rotate this around. Scale it down. And let’s just go into edit mode and move these shapes around. So, Alt Z to go to X-ray mode. And I can just move these into position. You can select a loop by alt left clicking on the loop. And I can scale this up for a forearm. Probably around there, I would say. And nice and thin, maybe a little bit wider. So scaling the Y for the wrist. And I’m just adjusting the shape very
[00:14:00] slightly so it matches the reference. Doesn’t need to be that far back. So I’ll bring it forward slightly. And again, just edit these shapes, moving them into position. Again, it’s quite blocky. So you could controlr, do a loop cut and kind of smooth it out. Perhaps I’ll do one loop cut around the middle here and then select these two. GG to edge slide these two. And you can curve the shape around quite easily by this technique. So GG to edge slide. Let’s come around to the back here. This one here. Not there. There. I can select the piece. GG to edge slide. And bring that back. So we can see kind of forearm there. Again, we can keep things simple for the hand. So, if I shift right click at the end here, shift A to add mesh and then cube. Scale it right down. Once again, I’ll scale it so it’s thin. Scale in the X. And I’m just scaling it down so it matches the hand a bit more. Let’s go to side view. Move it into position. And then into edit mode. And I might need to do a loop cut around the middle there. And just bring these into
[00:15:00] position. And for simplicity sake, let’s go to front view. In fact, let’s move this into position first. this one up to here needs to be a lot thicker. So I’ll select these fronts and come out to here. These vertices, just move them into position. And then select the end face there. E to extrude. G to grab and rotate it around. I’ll scale in the X so it’s a bit thinner. And another extrusion. And we can keep it nice and simple like that. We got the hand anyway. And we can get the thumb just coming out of the side here. So E to extrude. And we can look from side view here. G to grab. Rotate it around. Scale it down slightly. and E to extrude again. And we got ourselves a thumb. It’s got a really simple hand just there. A little bit curved, but my character’s hand is a bit curved as well. You can spread it out if you like, but it doesn’t look too bad there. Similar thing for the legs. So, I’ll just come out of X-ray mode so we can see the shape there. I’ll select the top there and shift D, duplicate, bring that down, and then model the legs with this. So, let’s go to side view, scale, shift
[00:16:00] Z, so I don’t scale in the Z axis. And scale in the X a bit wide there. And then again into edit mode and just move these into position. X-ray mode. Make it a little bit simpler. That looks okay. We probably need to sort out the side a little bit more. I’m probably going to want a little bit more topology. So control R. And then again just smooth the topology out. So GG. And I’m using controll leftclick to find the shortest path selection. And I want to make sure this overlaps a little bit more than it is. Let’s see what we’ve got. And we’re not looking too bad there. Let’s go to front view. Shift D to duplicate. Bring that down again. We’ll just edit the shape. Make sure it overlaps. And you can select an edge loop with alt left click. And again, make sure it overlaps like so. Lastly, the feet. So again, adding in a
[00:17:00] cube. Scale that down. I’ll position it around about here into edit mode. And I’ll select the front face and extrude outwards. And this face and extrude outwards. It looks a little bit silly at the moment, but we can sort this out. Let’s get to side view and set our shape a little bit more. Loop cut in here. Bring these down for the toes. And this can overlap nicely there. I go to top view and have a little bit of a curve to the foot like so. Okay, let’s see what we got. We got a nice looking character there. And again, you might want to go in and add a little bit more detail to certain areas like the arm here. I can round this out a little bit with that GG technique. And you can do a few more loop cuts and go in and add some detail if you want to, depending on how closely you want to keep with the PlayStation one graphic style. Just reposition this very slightly. And oh, I need an overlap in the middle a bit more. So, let’s make sure we select this object here. Remember to
[00:18:00] come out of edit mode into object mode before selecting a new object. And then back into edit mode. And then I can bring these down a bit. So, they’re definitely overlapping. The overlap is there for the rigging. So, when we move this arm around, it won’t kind of separate and it will look like it’s joined together nicely. Now, we need to just duplicate these to the other side. The easiest way for that is to set up another mirror modifier. So, if I select this one again, add modifier, type in mirror, and we’ve got a mirror in the x-axis there. That’s the local x-axis because I’ve rotated this around. We can just use a mirror object like this middle object here, and it will jump to the other side. And all these other objects, if I select those first, and then the one that has the mirror, select that last. Ctrl L will link, and you can choose copy modifiers. And we’ve got this wonderful looking low poly person here. It’s looking pretty awesome. So I’ll just select the backgrounds, hide those, and you can see this awesome looking PlayStation one character just here. So there we have it. That’s how we can create these
[00:19:00] PlayStation one style characters. Do check out the links in the description to my courses which are more detailed and more in-depth. And if you got any questions, do comment below. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next