This week we were also tasked with creating some mood boards, and thinking about what we might want to model for our first assignment. We were given the following list to choose from:
- Windmill
- Cuckoo Clock
- Treasure Chest
- Sword and Shield
- Sci-fi Helmet or Radio
- Old Well
- Magic Staff
Immediately, the staff or the treasure chest captured my imagination. These were the mood boards that I made up for these models:
I am taking a lot of inspiration from video games like Spyro the Dragon or Crash Bandicoot (the work of Toys for Bob, basically) in terms of how I would like to model the item I choose. I want it to be quite clean, chunky and blocky – very stylised as opposed to realistic:
I started by concepting some designs for my staff idea; I knew I wanted to go down a warlock/necromancy feel with my design – as soon as I read staff, the ‘Replica Staff of Gul’dan‘ popped into my head and I wanted something along the same theme. By looking at my Pinterest board, I think it’s pretty obvious that I took a lot of inspiration from the references:
I knew that I wanted the wood of the staff to branch off and act as the horns/fingers and that I want to go for a super warped look. I think this adds to the creepiness. I tried a few ideas including fingers, ram horns but my favourite concept was the staff split into two acting as ram/demon horns with the skull set into the centre; I drew this up digitally just to cement the idea:
I experimented with two colours for the glowing eyes, green is creepier and gives off a sense of fel-magic which is ominous. However, I am a sucker for a saturated pink/red and wanted to test how that would look too. I absolutely love how this concept turned out, and I think this is likely the option I will choose provided my lecturers think that it is achievable! I might continue to play around with the charms that are dangling from the ram horns; I used a dream catcher in one iteration and I would like to look more at that.
As for the treasure chest, I had pictured an incredibly saturated chest that was open, and had assorted gems and golden coins falling out of it as it’s filled to the brim with treasure! However, I also like the theme of my staff, and I wanted to look at staying with that! I turned to the game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice for inspiration on the style. After sketching, I realised that I was really focussing in on the chunky, attractive modelling I was talking about in spyro and therefore I decided to stick with this style but add in a skeleton looking to close the treasure chest shut, as if it died protecting it’s treasure, just to add that creepy element:
I decided to draw this up digitally as well:
I found concepting for this a lot more difficult, for some reason it just wasn’t clicking and I feel like the ideas are a lot simpler and bland. In saying that, I do like the style these have been drawn in, particularly the one on the top left. My favourite over all is the skeleton protecting the treasure with a lot of foliage overgrown around it, but I think that will possibly be out of my reach skill-wise at this point.
To conclude, I think I’m going to stick with my staff concept and see where it takes me and what my lecturers think about it! However, if everything I’ve come up with at is a bit out of my skill set and not recommended, I might revisit the treasure chest concept and attempt to develop it a bit more.