2017/2018

The academic year I started learning 3D, a extremely steep learning curve and one I felt behind with compared to others.

My First Pieces of work <3

I remember feeling extremely out of my depth and behind others in my class. A lot of them had some experience in 3D or just picked it up really quickly and I became very jealous of peoples work ethic more then anything else. Some classmates just created all the time and even took their spare time to keep learning and pushing themselves. That seriousness and dedication was something I really respected and aspired to be like yet failed at miserably. I could not be like them, I don't have boundless energy and motivation from just myself. It was those people who were very quickly successful after graduating and it was thoroughly deserved, I do hope they hold themselves high for how much they achieved because they're the sort of people who don't realise people looked up to them! It took a long time before I let go of comparing myself to them and got to terms with my own present situation.

Looking back, I shouldn't of been so hard on myself. I did fine, even if my grade said otherwise.

ABOVE: My first Diorama-"Kabuki Floating Island" I wanted the emphasis to be on the tree and nature taking over whatever had died on that ground. This scene was a sort of Samurai respite.

Village Project

The Village Character was in the same project where everyone was part of a team that we each made a building for to combine into a bigger village in engine.

The characters were based around ourselves, and mine, given my textiles background in college, was the tailor. I took heavy inspiration at first from Howls Moving Castle and Sophie's hat shop specifically. The silhouette was boring compared to others and I had tri count to spare, so I pushed it a lot further. I was exceptionally proud of the stylisation I achieved on this project, and deemed it my most successful at the time.

One thing I wish, looking back was more of a group environment, we all were quite nervous with each other and despite my efforts to have more of a group involvement I felt it just become more an independent thing anyway. I think it would of been a lot more fun if we talked more about how things were going. For someone like myself who loved working alone, it surprised me at the time, how much I wanted to do things more with others, and was a realisation that I wasn't as introverted as I assumed I was.

The Village Character

I am almost glad I got all the potential trip up's out the way on my very first character. I was extremely overly ambitious and struggled immensely. If I kept my character simple, my work could have been more aligned with the standard of others. My teachers warned me about the bagginess of clothing and complexity however didn't explain why well enough so I went ahead with the design anyway, I presume, they felt learning the hard way was more effective, and it defiantly was!

Rigging and skinning was a nightmare, especially with the very strange tutorial we were given, I still don't understand skinning now but back then I wanted to get really good at it.

I would like to redesign and remake this character one day. I think it would be interesting to see. At the time this was more of a "vent" project, getting out all my established design habits all at once to then move on to better and more thought out designs. I remember being heavily inspired by Zant from LoZ Twilight Princess.