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Poly world day 1- Robots and a mysterious shrine

8th December 2020 by Jahiem Walker | 0 comments

Today, I started my 3D rotation. The task is to create a low poly (a small number of polygons, rather blocky looking) world using a 3D software, blender. Our worlds will be based on a ‘What if?…’ question that we come up with by ourselves.

My first task for this rotation was to come up with some interesting ‘What if?’ questions, and choose one to develop into a world. I wanted to come up with concepts thati thought would be interesting visually, but i also wanted to enjoy what i was creating, so i swearched for a theme that satisfied both my desires. I did a quick brainstorm to generate some initial ideas;

I jotted down ideas for quick prompts, underlining the ones that i found the most interesting. I was left to decide out of 3 options; An ice world, a world with a traditional japanese aesthetic or a world in space.

In the end i decided to go with the Japan world. I’m really interested in japan’s history and traditions, and i like the aesthetics a lot, so i thought this would be the most enjoyable idea to go with. I also think it will provide me with the opportunity to make a range of interesting 3d objects for the model.

Now that i had my what if question, i needed to start thinking about the aesthetics. I gathered some traditional japanese pictures, to give me ideas on what kinds of things i wanted to have in my model, and what i wanted it to look like overall.

This moodboard was helpful in giving me some ideas of what i wanted to appear in my world, and what kind of atmosphere i wanted my piece to have. I really like the imagery of japanese shrines; they’re often beautiful and surrounded by nature, but also desolate, mysterious and somewhat haunting. Although they’re man-made, they feel like structures that grew naturally, managing to look both old and new at the same time.

I want to create something with a bit of a mysterious and magical feeling; my question is ‘what if you found a mysterious shrine in japan?’ i want to leave some of my work to the viewer’s imagination, leaving them to wonder what is beyond the doors of the mysterious temple.

With some aesthetics in mind, i was ready to start coming up with quick initial designs for my city.

With these rough drawings, i wanted to consider things like shape, arrangement and hierarchy. How tall did i want the temple to be? what was it surrounded by? how was it interacting with the atmosphere around it? i tried to keep my drawings extremely simple and fast, breaking everything down into basic shapes, as this would make it easier to model when the time came.

Next, i drew a more refined version of my design, working out some of the smaller details and finalising some shapes. I decided to have the shrine surrounded by both sakura trees and torii gates, creating a contrast between natural and man made features. I made the sky dark to add to the ‘mysterious’ feeling of the piece, and i added a brightly coloured sun and some glowy windows so that it didn’t feel too dark. I also didn’t want to shrine to come across as creepy, so i added a happy little character to bring the mood up and make the whole thing look more inviting. I chose to make him a fox, as foxes commonly dhow up in japanese prints and mythology.

As we have to develop our cities into 3d models eventually, we have to learn how to navigate a 3D software. we’re using blender, and to gain an understanding on how it operates, we were tasked with creating simple robots using basic shapes.

This was the first robot i made; a man with a hat, holding an ice cream. I made this before actually watching the lesson tutorial, so i was just improvising on how to put objects together. I don’t have much to say about this robot, because i didn’t follow any particular process while creating this, but it was fun.
This was the robot i made after watching the class tutorial. it was based on this image;
Witch Bot - found object robot sculpture assemblage | Robot sculpture, Robot art, Found art

I gained a better understanding on navigating blender after creating this robot; I learned a lot of blender shortcuts, and i was able to make this robot more quickly. I’m happy with how it turned out, because i feel it has more personality than my other 3D model. I deviated from my reference image a bit, because i wanted to add more of a personal touch to my robot.

Overall i’m enjoying 3D a lot right now, even though it’s all quite new to me. I feel like i’ll come out of this rotation as an improved and more skilled artist, and i’m looking forward to learning more.

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