Skip to main content

What do I Do- Part 1


The brief is simple- create a prop and animate it!


BUT. 

What prop? What do I do? 

So lets look at what I want from this model:

I want a prop that'll look great on a portfolio (I get it- it won't be incredibly amazing and I'm sure it'll have it's issues, but it's a start.)

I want to be challenged, I want to make something that won't be easy, but will give me lots of learning opportunities along the way. 

I want to make  a prop that has character and can tell its own story.

Two triggers? Twice the fun! 

So naturally I drifted towards a sword first. Well, no that's a lie at first I thought about Deckard’s Gun from Blade Runner. I'm going through a very cyberpunk/dystopian phase at the moment. A brief look
online can tell that this has been done to death. It's a gun too so personally I was reluctant, there are some incredible gun models out there, covering almost any type of firearm available. 





Then I thought about a sword, sharp, pointy- probably quite straight forward if I wanted it to be. But not for this specific assignment I reckon. ( Though I have seen some damn impressive and detailed swords in quite a few portfolios so it remains a back-up I suppose.)

Then I thought about a GUNSWORD...


Seriously this might be the best Burger I've seen in a game!

Then I thought about a burger, I could use McDonalds as a research trip! I could buy a shed load of burgers for 'reference'. I'm only half joking here, but the thing about a burger- the modelling side could probably be done reasonably well I think but the texture-work would have to be on point, to really make it stand out- and if my 3D modelling skills are lacking my texturing is, well, I've never done it before- I understand some of the ideas behind it but not enough at this stage to bring this particular idea to life. 

So I decided on a space ship.
But Ben, isn't there like a billion spaceships out there? Yeah. There are a metric ton of them.
My idea is that I can scale the complexity to match my skills if I find myself struggling. I can inject character into the animation, be it hurtling from the sky or caught in a vicious dogfight in the stars. There are different styles I could go for, the more old-school 70's sci-fi or a more modern sleek approach. It's one of those things that the more I thought about it- the more the idea appealed to me. I'm not 100% on the design of the ship yet; I'm knee-deep in Pinterest, Artstation etc. trying to finalise it- but I'm pretty much decided at this point. 

Yes, this is mine yes, it's a first try-
no it's not for a PSOne game...


I decided to boot up Maya 2018- fresh faced and just give it a try and the results where....well...but this was more to try to re-familiarise myself with Maya than anything else and just see what I made just on the word -spaceship without any particular reference. (It's just a square with lots of extruding to be honest)


Unless I see something different then I guess I'll have to write this all again...

Follow up post with research to follow...soon

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rendering- Let's glam up!

The part I was most excited about this whole process was the rendering. Luckily I rendered out quite a few shots as I tried to pin down the look of the final scene so we'll go through them and I'll try to discuss each but the process and the progress of the image should tell you how keen I was to get the image looking right.  I'll do a post-mortem on the project as a whole and my general thoughts soon but for now let's focus on getting the image right.  This was one of my first attempts. The lighting was drab and I hadn't thought about texturing anything at this stage. I took this image relatively early on in the process. To me it doesn't really 'pop' out. The lighting is a touch too dark and the framing of the scene is out of place. The focus should be on the train- but it isn't. The focus is on the room as a whole.  Now we move onto my second render, you'll see a very basic laptop has appeared in the scene and a poster of the Toy Story ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Night before!

I know it's been a long time coming but I wanted to be done with my project before I addressed it here. So this is the first of a couple of posts- this one will go over the          project itself and the next post will cover rendering and the stages I ran through to get everything working so let's dive into it!  Found on 3D warehouse So I decided to go down the toy train route, simple but effective if done well. I started to  research the references. I wanted something simple but could really shine as a 'hero' asset- that is the focal point of a scene. The wooden train you see to the left is more detailed than my own- I wanted a clean look, polished and simple so it didn't fit.  Found @  https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3d-wooden-toy-train-1215533 This toy train was another consideration, it was simple and something I felt I could accomplish. I felt that after my previous attempts I needed to get someth...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spaceship progress and thoughts so far,...

So this is the image I decided to use as a reference for my space ship- it's baased on the spaceship from the video game No Mans Sky and the image itself is by Justin Mezzell . So here's my progress so far- it's still rough and it's behind where I expected I'd be at this point in time but so far it's looking ok- I'm having some trouble with the engines on the wings at the moment which is a bit of a pain. Overall I'm happy with the look so far but we'll see how it develops beyond this. 
Post a Comment
Read more