Reflections: Animation The first project we were given was to model a desk in Maya. Since it was the first time I had ever done 3D modeling on my own, I made a ton of mistakes, which ended up causing problems later. However, it taught me a lot about how to use the program, and it was a good stepping stone for later projects. Next, we were supposed to use “extrusions” to create fire hydrants of different types. Extrusions were really helpful later when I was doing my weapon and character models. This project, although brief, taught me a lot of really important skills that I used later. The weapon design was the next model we created in Maya. I started by sketching a design idea in ProCreate, which I then brought into Maya and attempted to copy. The shape was really hard for me to get right, but I managed the best I could with the skills I had. If I were to do it again, I would try to model the blade much cleaner and more symmetrical. The last project we did in Maya was the character model. For this project, Mr. Cho recommended that we pick an interestingly stylized character to model, rather than a simple humanoid. I picked one of my D&D characters named Crumble because I believed their shapes would be fun to model in Maya, and would present an interesting challenge for me, as I rarely ever draw/animate non-human characters. After Maya, we moved to ZBrush. ZBrush was much more my strong suit, since sculpting and carving is much more intuitive to me than building a shape from scratch with polygons, vertices, and faces. I had already used ZBrush a few times before this, so I knew a lot of the basic tools, but I learned about tools like the “hPolish” brush, which I ended up using a LOT in future ZBrush projects. The character face model has probably been my favorite ZBrush project to date. I love drawing faces, and a lot of that love carried over to this. Instead of drawing in the shadows, I had to carve them in; it was really cool to see my knowledge of facial anatomy coming in handy, even though this was a 3D medium instead of 2D. I was trying to create a realistic version of a character that I had only ever drawn in a stylized art style, so that was a really fun exercise. My character has stylized slanted eyes, high cheekbones, rounded eyebrows, a very pointed chin, and an exaggerated hooked nose. I tried to remove the stylization from these features, while still keeping the character recognizable. In my free time, I added more, refining the facial features and adding hair. The hair was REALLY difficult, since it stuck straight out in the ponytail. I hope to one day have the time to go back and add more, like finishing the ears, detailing the eyes, adding bangs, and even coloring it in Substance Painter if I have time. Another angle. After creating the ZBrush face, we went back to our character model and added detail. The most difficult part for me was making sure the details were deep and defined enough to show up on a low poly model. I spent a long time on this assignment, because I wanted to make it as close to my vision as possible.