The following images are some early renders of Tooky with his texture applied. The model is built from polygons. The low poly model is used when animating to give fast feedback in the viewport, and is then sub-divided to give a much smoother surface mesh when it comes to rendering him.

I wanted to give him a water colour painting look, which I think is getting there. At the moment I have no bump or specular map applied to the model, which is why he looks quite flat.

There is also some stretching of the texture at the sides. This is more to do with the way I created the image in the first place than bad texturing. In trying to create wild water colour strokes, the brush's placement has given an exagerated impression of stretching, I'll remedy this next week.

Tooky will have a number of ways of moving. When stationary, he is flat footed, when running he rises onto his toes so that his legs can cover more distance. His belly wobbles, as does his 'berry' antennae, and he can move his bum into many extreme poses.

To aid in selecting different body parts, I have created a synoptic view in XSI to get quickly to the parts of his skeleton that need to be manipulated.

His facial expression are controlled using sliders, which are connected to a number of shape targets in the scene. This allows the animator to quickly pull tooky into a variety of poses that he or she is after. Everything from blinking and pupil size to nose wiggle can be altered from this window.