For my 3D project, I decided I would create a magic staff.
I drew a lot of inspiration from the magic staffs and weapons I would see in Magical Girl anime I used to watch while growing up. I created a PureRef board with some pictures of staffs and weapons to inspire my ideas.
Magical girl staffs usually have cute motifs such as wings and hearts. I wanted to make my staff more of a witch’s staff, so I have some more gothic motifs here, such as crosses.
My staff started off as a simple cone, stretched and resized to mimic the one in my drawing.
I had a bit of trouble with modeling this part in the center which looks a bit like a squashed sphere. I had to create a shape that was mostly round, but had straight edges where it met the gold. I used a simple beveled ring for the gold rings.
I found squashing a regular sphere didn’t give me the effect that I wanted.
I cut some faces off both the top and bottom of the sphere.
I modified its shape a bit, using symmetry to assure the bottom was the same as the top, and filled in the holes. This shape was much closer to what I was looking for.
Modelling the bat wings was something I was unsure of, so I looked up a youtube tutorial on modelling custom shapes. I imported my drawing to Maya to trace over using the Create Polygons tool.
Once my shape was created, it was totally flat.
I extruded the shape to make it more 3 dimensional. I also beveled the edges to make the wings appear slightly rounded.
Once I had my basic shapes down, here was the bare bones of my staff. The bat wings were a little bit more rigid than I wanted, however I couldn’t figure out how to curve the edges.
My next step will be the gold embellishments on the top and bottom of the staff, and then the jewels.