For our assignment in our 3D Digital Literacy Module we asked to Model, UV Wrap Texture and Render one of a few select objects given to us in the assignment prompt, out of the few given to us I wanted to try and make some sort of witch / wizard staff!
First concepts:
In the beginning I knew that I wanted to try and make my own concept for the staff and so I started off just drawing staff with very basic thick lines to try and see what kind of elements I want to include in my designs. After scribbling down a few designs I came to really like the idea of having a ball of some kind floating at the top of the staff with some kind of design going around it and at the bottom of the staff there’ll be some kind of design as a “counter weight” for the topside. making sure it isn’t just some decoration on the top of a stick.
Staff themes:
Arcane:
Next I wanted to come up with a few different themes for the staff, for the first batch of designs I just went with a generic looking magical staff. After looking at some references from various games such as World of Warcraft I came up with a handful of concepts that I started to like, these designs usually contained some floating pieces to them in order to help sell the whole fantasy idea.
Flowers:
Next up for my concept themes I wanted to go for something different that might look like something a witch may use, and because witches are usually associated with forests and wildlife I decided to try and make these wands based off of flowers. Out of all of my designs these are some of my favorites, being based off of exotic flowers and plant-life such as Lady eardrop flowers and pink lotus flowers they felt much less rigid than my other designs with much less symmetry. I didn’t want the staffs to look too stiff so I made sure that the handle’s weren’t ever completely straight, they always had some kind of bend to them, in addition to that they also had other plant matter sprouting out from them. I did this in order to try and sell the idea further that these staffs we’re made excursively from plant life.
Living:
For my final batch of designs I was thinking about how plants are living object and so I came up with the idea of actually making the staff somewhat of a living creature, or made up of a living creature. During this time I remembered a game called War-frame which has weapons made up of a thing called the “infestation” which consumes living and robotic beings and infects them in order to spread its infection across the galaxy. And so I went and referenced that along with staff different that included some sort of body part, such as a skull. These designs had a lot of sharp edges like the staff itself was made from sharpened bone, I wanted too to make it seem like the staff was alive so I’d typically give the staff an eye at the top of it which would look around. One of my favorite designs came from this batch, that being a huge open mouth with sharp teeth, revealing an eye at the end of a staff made from a bone-like substance, unlike the rest of the designs I made for that batch this one seemed much more like a living creature more than the rest.
Final concepts:
In the end I picked out two final concepts from the various batches I did in order to see which one of the lot I wanted to actually model, in the end I went for the living staff design with a huge jaw and a sort of arcane staff. I wanted to pick one of the flower designs but I felt like it would be too complicated for me to try a model as a beginner. Before picking which one I wanted to model I added a few more details to their designs. For the arcane staff I added a couple of rings around the handle and added some designs to the bottom of the staffs handle. For the Living staff I added some spikes to the underside of the jaw and drew out the length of the staff’s handle a bit to help make it looks less like a wand. In the end however I decided to model the arcane staff as I felt like it was a bit more in my skill-range to model.
