Making the Portable Navi

I decided to make a desktop featuring this Navi and put a lot of effort into making a 3D model of it--the end result can be seen on my downloads page.

How I researched and put it together makes an interesting story.

Disclaimer: The screen shots on this page from Serial Experiments Lain are for supporting artistic commentary in a fair use manner. The copyright by its original creator is respected.

My first task was to capture reference stills from the anime. In making the 3D model it was important to refer to images which showed the portable Navi from various angles--top, side, bottom, and so on. This allowed me to judge the shape and size of its features. Pictures from the DVD's sketch galleries also helped.

Figure 1	Figure 2	Figure 3
Figure 4	Figure 5	Figure 6

Figures 1 to 3 show the portable Navi in its original unmodified state, along with its stylus. Figure 6 was the most complete and greatly helped make the portable Navi.

I soon discovered the portable Navi was drawn slightly differently at times! My guess is that either the animators didn't fully understand its shape, it was drawn by several people, the animators wanted to save time when it was shown at different distances and angles... or they got sloppy. Perhaps it's all of the above to some degree. ;-) As one example, the sticker on the back is seen in figures 1 and 5, but not in figure 4.

Anyhow, I made a "best guess" on what the series creator wanted it to really look like. To this day I still haven't a clue what that black beaded rubber tube-like structure (?!?) really is that's hanging from the bottom--as seen in figure 6.

As for the surfaces, I looked at various real-world cellphones, rubber cables, rubber buttons, ribbon cables, and plastic molding for computer peripherals. I based my surfaces on those, as flat cell-shaded anime stills from the series made it hard to figure out what its surface was made out of.

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10

Here are two cellphones I examined the surfaces of: one by Motorola (the v2397) and the other by DoCoMo (the P209iS.) The Motorola, as seen in figures 7 and 8, uses a removable rubberized case. The DoCoMo has a metallic looking surface, as seen in figures 9 and 10. Which surface is most like that of the portable Navi? Again, the flat cell shading from the series made it difficult to tell. I really liked the DoCoMo metallic surface--it was classy! Perhaps a bit too classy for Lain, so in the end I chose the rubberized Motorola surface.

* Development *

Now the real work began as I created the Navi model in my 3D program. I referenced the anime stills for the various features, shapes, sizes and colors. The basic portable Navi, seen in figures 1 to 3 above, are modeled in figures 11 and 12 below. All the attachments can be seen modeled in figures 13 to 15 below.

Figure 11 ( larger version )	Figure 12 ( larger version )	Figure 13 ( larger version )
Figure 14 ( larger version )	Figure 15 ( larger version )

The portable Navi's bottom attachment shape was a real challenge to understand until I realized the bottom *was sawed straight off* and the bottom ribbon connector was put flush against it! This can be seen as the lower red object (a negative boolean object) in the camera and front views of figure 13.

The ribbon cable was also a challenge--getting it to bend right while having its groove surface look decent was tough. The connector cords were slightly tricky too, as I had to position them in 3D space without intersecting other objects, as seen in figure 14.

Figure 16

Figure 17

I then applied the surfaces everywhere. The button graphics are based on what was in the anime, as seen in figure 16, rather than real-world cellphone button graphics. The graphics I used can be seen in figure 17.

Figure 18

Figure 19

Figure 20

A lot of study went into the portable Navi screen graphics. I examined the anime stills for objects, sizes, colors, words, and typefaces (as seen in figures 18 and 19). I created my own screen, seen in figure 20, and applied it to the 3D model screen object as a decal. At first the screen wasn't bright enough. I discovered the trick was to increase the screen's surface glow property--now the portable Navi screen looked bright!

As for the screen window contents... some words are tech-jargon, while others are just me having fun. If you look closely (easier noticed in the largest version of the desktop) you'll see "Mokona in the Wired", which is a reference to my other favorite anime series. You'll also see an Adobe Illustrator palette list with the names of each layer from lain on... each layer. :-) In back of all this is the Tachibana logo inside a swirling blue shape. The amber program listing is from an open source "Neko" app.

Figure 21 ( larger version )

Figure 22 ( larger version )

I did a lot of comparing and adjusting of various Navi elements to get it to match my "best guess", what was in the anime, and what it might look like if physically done in the real world. The end result can be seen as a wireframe in figure 21 and rendered in figure 22.

* Integration *

Figure 23 ( larger version )

Figure 24 ( larger version )

Having completed the 3D model, I did a high quality render with an alpha channel mask (to separate out all the 3D objects). I brought it into Photoshop so I could composite it with other elements for my desktop. These included glows, "the Wired shadow", Lain logo typeface, and words among other things. I also did a dark version of the desktop and several sizes of the light and dark desktops.

The final result can be seen in figures 23 and 24. Larger sized versions of these can be downloaded from the Lain Downloads page.

Well, that's how I made my portable Navi. I hope you enjoyed the tale! :-)