What is Zenith?
At Freestyle Academy, the Zenith Project is the final major project that we do. We were tasked to basically make whatever we wanted, as long as it loosely fits within our electives.
The purpose of the project was to test any of our skills that we learned during our time at Freestyle and make it into a project, we can make it as large as we want it to be. I decided to use 3D modeling and animation, which is what we learned in our Senior Animation elective, to make my project.
Before I talk about my Zenith project, I want to give some context of what the project is. In our Senior year English class we were tasked to make a World building project alongside other group members, I decided to pitch a story based off of the Short Story project in my Junior year to my group members, the story is called “No Man’s Land”. When working on the World building unit, I really got into the project, so I decided to take it one step further and do something with it for my final project at Freestyle
The Plan
Throughout this project, the original plan was to fully 3D model the main character, Eugene Croy, and create a 3 minute Animation based off a scene from the World building project. Due to time, the animation had to be scrapped early on and I just just focus on modeling the main character. Here are some storyboards based on that original idea:
Went unused for this project. But who knows, it could be used in the future.
Modeling Process
To start off the modeling process, I need to create a model sheet as a reference before I start sculpting and modeling. I asked an artist I knew to create a model sheet for my character and they created one for me, here it is below:
The character’s design is based off of Valve Software’s Team Fortress 2, I picked that game in particular for this project because the game fit within No Man’s Land’s grounded western design and it allowed me to make a fully envisioned product easier.
With that, I moved on to actually making the model. I used Zbrush as the primary software to block out and model and sculpt out the details, I also used Autodesk Maya to block out the clothing like the coat and hat.
Final Product
This is the final product. I have conflicting opinions about it, but I’m genuinely proud how far I got. This was my first time ever attempting to model a full human character, and it challenged my skills as a 3D modeler. It also allowed me to get used to Zbrush, which before this project I didn’t enjoy using it all that much, that changed with this project. I was interested in doing even more with this project including texturing and rigging, but ran out of time. I really like this project and what I’ve made, but I know there is more room for improvement and I plan to continue with this project on my own.
Presentation
Reflection
This project is based off of my World building project in English, and has been in the works for a couple of years. I wanted to celebrate my Zenith project by creating something based on an original story that I have been passionate about for years.
During this project, I studied Team Fortress 2’s design and art-style heavily. I used presentations made by the game studio about the game’s design and made sure that my model fit within the art-style. Other inspirations for the art-style was also Hellboy, due to the comics unique silhouettes and beautiful pulp art illustrations. Pulp art is sensational, high-contrasted illustrations from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century used for cover art, which fit perfectly with the style I was going for.
I did collaborate with others in the World building project, which this project is based off of, but for the most part I did this project solo. However, I did collaborate with someone when designing the second iteration of Eugene Croy, which was creating the model sheet for me to use as a reference. The collaboration was very successful, as the artist knew the style and tone I was going for and created an awesome rendition of my character.
The 21st Century Skill that I learned from the most out of this project was definitely risk taking, as the project was ambitious and something I haven’t tried before. I started off this school year not knowing how to model a 3D character to sculpting and modeling a full human character, it was a massive undertaking and challenged all my modeling skills that I’ve learned to this point. The skill I used the least was teaming and collaboration, since this project was mostly done by myself besides the model sheet and some help from others.
I feel like I accomplished igniting my own passion and elevating my own skills for this project. The entire World building project as a whole is a huge passion of mine, as I spent a massive amount of time on this project creating and curating it, and I jumped to the idea of expanding my own skills using a project that I’m passionate about. I explored more of my World building project as my final swan song at Freestyle Academy.
If I were to redo this project, I would likely scrap modeling the main character and find stand-in models to create an animation. I’m still proud of modeling Eugene Croy, but creating a visual piece of that story would’ve been more fulfilling for me instead of creating one asset. Telling the story is more important to me than focusing on the visual aspect, as that can be refined and improved later on.
One value I wanted to share about this project is that it is okay to be ambitious, but you have to be reasonable of what you are able to create. Most people who have a really ambitious project they want to do end up scrapping it due to the lack of skills needed to make that project. I originally was going to make a full animation with custom character models, but had to just focus on creating the character model part because that was the first time I ever tried to do something like that. Don’t make something big with no idea on how to make it, it is okay to learn the skills and create smaller projects before making the big project you want to make, be reasonable with what you can make and go from there.