Moving on from my research I began designing some staffs, on Adobe Illustrator, with different features I liked on them. I played around with size, width and style.
I began with some traditional tribal features onto a staff, keeping the theme of glowing orbs/skulls. I thought these came out great and allowed me to see what I was capable of doing and what I’m not.
With the first three drawings complete, I assessed what I had done and decided any of these would be too much for what I could do, with the feathers and the hanging assessories, and so I crossed these options out.
Moving on to the second set of designs, I really loved the dragon piece I thought with the right texturing and layering it would come out amazing but for the timeframe and experience I had I thought it would be too much to achieve. However, the other two pieces I liked as well but there was nothing that stood out and the final piece wouldn’t look appealing or interesting but I did like the use of the orb and the shaping of the staffs.
For my final designs I loved them both, I used a previous staff from my first designs and added detailing along the bottom with the use of metal discs stuck onto the staff. However, I didn’t like how much they stuck out and the model didn’t look eye catching enough, as well as the placing of the handle which didn’t look right to me. The last design on the right is what I liked the most, it kept with the tribal theme and made sense to me with the placing of the handle and the proportions of the staff. The glowing orb in the center is what interested me the most with the claw shaped wood curved around it, it made it feel mysterious and powerful. However, I don’t know if I will stick to one orb, the possibility of a couple more floating orbs around the staff might work well.
Articles & videos:
Autodesk Maya 2020 _ Stylized 3D Magic Staff Modeling in Maya 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQO6-KHbaM8
3D Modeling Voldimus’ Staff- Speed Modeling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC4_PiJKKjw