Staff modelling

This week I created the rest of the dragon and connected it to the tail.

Making the head was extremely difficult and took a long time. Sculpting the mouth, nose and eyes were the most challenging parts as they are shaped awkwardly and required lots of small adjustments to make them look just right. The horns and spikes were easier to create and involved me having to extrude out a rectangle and shaping it to get small and into a point.

After creating the head I then modelled the body and joined it to the tail. This was mostly simple as I kept extruding and resizing the shape of the dragon downward, starting from the neck, making sure to include shoulders for the wings to be attached to. A more difficult part of the body was the bottom where it joins to the tail. Here I had to slowly shrink the body while twisting it towards the tail joint. I found it hard to shape it right so it still looked like a natural bend.

Next I created the wings and modelled them separate from the rest of the dragon. They were fairly simple to make. The main arms are cylinders which I sculpted to get thicker at the base and to include a spike at the joint and the tip of the arm. The three long fingers running out from the main arm include two joints in each and are each shaped into a point at the end. The web of the wing is a 2D lamina which I joined to certain points of the arm and fingers. I then extruded it a very small amount to make it 3D.

Finally I joined the wings to the dragon and shaped them to curve slightly and angled them forward a bit. I am very happy with how my model is looking and I am now finished with modelling it.

UV mapping

After I finished modelling my staff I then UV mapped it in all its parts. I began by mapping the easiest bits first, the main body of the staff and the gem. They were both very easy to map and di not require much time to complete.

Next I mapped the wings which was simple enough. I made sure to cut them correctly so each of the three sections folded out completely, both front and back sides.

 

Finally I mapped the main dragon. this was far more complex than the other parts as I had to cut it into parts. i divided the tail in half and cut a seam along it. For the head I cut off the spikes and unfolded them separately. I also unfolded the bottom part the head separate from the top. My next cuts were to separate the head from the body and the body from the tail. Lastly I cut the arms off and cut each one into sections and unfolded them all.