Explorations

During the Explorations Project, all Junior Freestyle students will explore his/her own passion and improve upon a particular skill set.

For me, the Explorations Project at Freestyle Academy was a time to learn a skill that I always wanted to try but never had the opportunity to do. The skill was 3D modeling. I used the month that we were given to learn how to model the human body using the software Autodesk Maya.

During the project I found that I really enjoyed 3D modeling. During the 2D animation classes my art wasn’t the worst, but always felt as if it were lacking in comparison to similar pieces. The 3-dimensional models I created during the project, while not extremely advanced, were complex and aesthetically pleasing. The creation process felt unique and was interesting to create. It also improved my technological literacy (it helped me understand how character models are made and used in the professional industry). I look forward to improving this skill during my second year at Freestyle Academy.

Infographic

An infographic I created to visualize different industries’ usage of different 3D modeling softwares

The infographic was created in Adobe Illustrator

 

3D Modeling in Maya

Creation Process

Sword

Due to the nature of the exploration unit at Freestyle Academy, this was the very first time I had ever used the software Autodesk Maya. I heard from seniors that Maya was incredibly difficult and tedious to work with. Not sure of what I was getting into, I decided to model a more simple object before moving onto the more difficult. The simple object I decided to model was a sword (see below). I followed a Youtube tutorial and created this:

 

Human Body

Having grasped the basic concepts of Maya after creating the sword, I felt that I was ready to move on to my ultimate goal for the unit: to model the human body. To do this I wanted to follow a Youtube tutorial. The problem with that was that the good tutorials had you pay for the reference images they used. I didn’t want to pay so instead I watched a video or two of people creating head models at 4x speed. While not exactly what I wanted, I got the general concept by watching the modeling of the human head. I used the techniques I picked up on to create the following:

Attempt #1:

At this point Maya crashed and . However, the model that I had created wasn’t made well (many of the polygons were obviously not the right shape – example: square where the stomach should be). The crash gave me the opportunity to restart and make it better.

Attempt #2:

This model that I made was much better as the polygons were the right shape.