I was ready to start my Japanese low poly shrine after some of my blender lessons, as i had enough knowledge now to start planning it out.
I started with the basic shapes for my model. I tried my hardest to vary the shapes; i used a combination of YouTube tutorials and the uni recordings to create a variety of shapes, so that my model wouldn’t look too repetitive. I also wanted my world to look a bit stylised, so i used some odd shapes for different objects, such as using the ico sphere (a sphere with faces instead of a smooth sphere) for the clouds and the fox. I added a few details that weren’t present in the drawing, such as the two lanterns, as i felt there was too much empty space in the model. i also added some fish to the water, so that i’d have more moving objects in the animation stage. Next, i added colours to my piece. I wanted some things to emit light (the sun, fish and windows) so i followed a tutorial and got them to glow. I tried to lean more towards pastel colours with my palette than darker ones; i wanted my world to look mysterious in more of an ‘enchanted’ way than a ‘creepy scary’ way.I added some different materials to my world, so that it didn’t look too flat and untextured. I put in some water, and a little bridge as a walking path. I also made the floor a little shiny, so that it would reflect light and look magical.i added a glowing material to my fish, because i thought it would look cool if they illuminated the water. I also wanted to put something in that would match the colour of the sun.I imported some 2D images as planes to add subtle details to my piece. Too much of these would look tacky, so i opted to only use them for the lamps. Lastly i added some lights to the model, which brought everything together. I added three types of light; a white point light over the temple to draw attention to it, some pink and blue point lights to add a mystical look to the piece, and an orange sun light, to make the sun look like it was the main thing illuminating the place. The world ended up a lot brighter than expected, but I’m happy with the result.
Overall, I’m happy with my piece and I look forward to finishing it. I feel it gives off the kind of magical, Disney like atmosphere that I was aiming to create well.
