Staff Animation Blog 2

Hey guys, and welcome to another Staff Animation Blog!

​This week was mainly focussed on modelling, with a bit of UV mapping chucked in there. I think I'm going to go a bit formulaic this week, and separate my production into successes, problems and things I’m doing next week.

Successes...
​A fair few of these! With all this artwork that I’m drawing off, the staff is getting its overall shape quite quickly. There’s a large focus on a "crystal based design". I like my magic weapons to use some sort of logic, and this weapon is purposed to focus the magi's power through the crystal for amplification and direction. So, I really want that to be part of my design. I am however taking on an almost sci-fi faceted look for some parts. I have been a fan of fantasy sci-fi for a while now, so that’s just leeching off my own personal preferences.

​For the other main success, I managed to get another student, by the name of James Ball, to help me with my rigging for the staff. I've been dubious about the process since the Chest I made, but he cleared the process right up, and I'm surprisingly confident with it now. I'm trying to get this done early so that when it comes to animation stages, I can just go straight in with no worries.

Problems / Setbacks.
​The staff is soooooo long. I keep measuring it, comparing it to human scale etc., but it just always seems too long. Increase the width, it looks fat, so increase the height and we're back where we started. I am going for a long thin design, I just feel like it’s too much on the high side. I'm going to keep working on it, obviously.

​The only other real problem is that I hit a kind of mind-block early in the modelling. The treasure chest, when all was said and done was a modified square. Now that im going for rounder shapes, and more fluid design, I found myself at a halt there for a bit while my mind tried to reorient itself to the concepts. I have mostly found my way past this though, with the use of splines. Magical things splines. I've decided to have a kind of winding gild run up the staff. Its thick at the moment, and I have to choose whether the have it flat to the staff or out a bit. This isn’t too bad though, because all i used was a helix spline of a slightly larger radius than the staff base.

What am I working on next week?
​Unfortunately, next week is UV maps. I’m not a fan of the process, to be entirely honest. But it’s necessary, so it will get done.
After that I will begin texturing on Quixel (2016) after that.
 
Well, thanks for reading guys! I will try to post up some pictures so you can see my progress, hopefully that bug sorted itself out :P
 
Peter Carey
Dracon Interactive
 
 
References:
Quixel. Quixel, 2016. Print.
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