09/08/15 - Prop work

Spent most of the weekend working on my prop.  As it is a more or less simple shape with a lot of less simple facets, it has been easy enough constructing the shape.  The faces are more of a problem, as a lot of them are triangle shaped, which causes problems in the mesh once it is smoothed.  Currently I'm working on refining this, but here is the basic set up of the faces in the meantime:

If it were possible, I would like to simply leave the mesh the way it is now and not have to think about the smoothed version.  As it stands though, I need to reinforce some of the edge and work out how to keep all those triangles pointy without having the thing warp in on itself.

I've also been working on the character who is technically a part of this prop and have made a couple of character sheets to test out colors and things for them.  The first is a color test, and the second is what they would look like with texture and a blue overlay, since they would be underneath the ice in the final prop:

While designing this character, there were a few things I wanted to keep in mind:

• Vasili is a Druid and is supposed to have a very ambiguous gender and could be either male or female.  In reality, they are neither.  They're basically a plant, just like Embry is basically a lump of clay.
• I chose a lot of earthy colors for them - brows and greens, going for a tree or flower sort of theme.  The palettes at the beginning and end of the row are my favorite ones, though chances are I'll be using the one on the end for my final piece of them.
• They are meant to represent Embry's opposite, so are tall where he is short, dark where he is light and have sleepier eyes and longer fingers than his.  Like a tree, they just want to sit in the sun and photosynthesize, but doing it alone can be quite lonely.
• Most importantly, Vasili  takes inspiration from a character created by maedaeme on tumblr, and their likeness in this project has been used with permission.

The only thing I need to draw of them now is the frozen pose from my storyboards and animatic - I've already got the sketch finished, and hope to complete the rest of it tonight.