Marking Period 3

MP3 blog post

My Progress in the class for this marking period

Planning: This marking period was somewhat chaotic due to everything going on right now. With my musical season kicking off as well as getting ready for graduation and some other personal things I was a bit stressed. I wasn't quite sure after finishing the Victorian bathroom project what direction I wanted to head into. I wanted to again create a character but I knew I wouldn't have enough time to model a human So I struggled to think of material. I wasn't completely sure the direction I wanted to go when I was creating so I just started making something. I wanted it to be a bit abstract and the first thing I thought of was doing a character with really exaggerated features and limbs. I took some inspiration from Violet from the Incredibles as well as Jack Skellington due to their unique body types and movements. Using the cloak that I made for my mushroom man project I thought about what I could use for a few variations of clothing styles for future projects and how hopefully one of those could spark inspiration for this next character I would make

Producing: As I explained above, I spent a lot of time creating different potential outfits and variations I could use for this project to choose which spoke to me the most. I ended up with a design based of similar images such as the following that I thought would be the most useful. I wanted to create something that would lend itself well to something in the fantasy genre or perhaps something spooky. from there I created a pair of pants and boots to use in combination with the vest with coattails. That was the easy part for me, now I just had to create the person or thing that was wearing the clothes and since I had already decided to not create a human I had to be creative. This caused me to create a headless horseman creature with a detached Jack O' Lantern head. I have already demonstrated my love for Halloween so I doubt anyone was surprised by this choice. To create the head I just used the knife tool on a UV sphere to make the face in a somewhat free-form way. To create the bumpiness on the pumpkin I then made a texture using the deform modifier and a voronoi texture on a color-ramped fresnel node in cycles. This took a lot of fine adjustment trial and error to get correct but I am very happy with how the finished pumpkin head looks and think it's one of the best things I've made in this program.

Evaluating: I'm am quite proud of how the finished product looks and also the way I took to get there. I liked how instead of creating things based around the techniques I knew that I instead learned new ways to create the things I wanted. I did haven to create a few versions of the objects when learning this way but I feel that it definitely led to better results. I am most proud of my use of the cloud voronoi texture to create the grooves on the pumpkin. I hope that I can use these techniques while finishing up this project as well. (if we even go back to school.)

Integrating: I think my theme is pretty obvious this time around. Although a headless horseman is a character that already exists in folklore and other horror culture I felt that I could still put my own spin on it. I think that I may still have a bit of problems finishing up the project by making the scene around my character match the same ambiance and spooky effect. I want to use things or places that give off certain feelings, such as a bridge or alleyway at night. I look forward to making these things to go along with my character.