Project 2 Artist Statement

Honestly, this project for me was just about learning and having fun. I have a lot of experience in modeling and textures and rendering but not much experience with rigging. So it was a great opportunity to get an edge on that. Everything that I modeled was something I wanted to model which I don’t do very often. I’m focused on a career in motion animation and VFX so oftentimes I’m just trying to make everything as realistic as it can possibly be. However, the silly fungi, Uncle Bao, and the sea lion are all major obsessions of mine, so it was super exciting to just chill out for once and enjoy. I also tried a new technique that I’m going to expand on in my portfolio for normals manipulation. You brush out the normals in a normal map and it makes everything look very stylized without a bunch of texture editing. As for rigging, I’m still a bit lost in all honesty. It hasn’t exactly clicked in my head yet and I don’t think it will anytime soon, but I’m nothing if not determined to get it right and learn new things. I will say that I’ve come a very long way from last year when I couldn’t figure out even the most basic of concepts in rigging. That in and of itself is very encouraging for other problems I’m facing in Blender. So overall this was a great confidence boost and I look forward to working on this stuff in my independent study.