M4

This was a client project I got some time back. The relationship with the client was a strange once, and it wouldn’t make sense to comment further as I think the whole experience itself was something else. I was no angel myself, but what I took away from it was a lot more than a new monitor.

The first piece - the receiver - was easily the hardest. The big mistakes were:

• support loops in general
• not outlining the entire object first (planning ahead)
• working-in the smaller details too soon, making it more complicated
• not developing all the pieces together

The last of the points above is what I think was a strategy I discovered (for myself) over time throughout the project. A look at the original model makes it clear that there are some sections that are symmetrical, and some that aren’t. Joining incompatible together often led to things becoming more complicated as well as adding more geometry that made it more difficult to join the rest.

There were so many metaphors jumping at me throughout this whole process.

By the time I got to this piece I think I had distilled a lot of the tricks and strategies - like copying over similar geometry and editing it to fit where possible in order to save time. Eventually I would look at a complicated piece and be able to gauge how much less work I’d need to do by building far enough and transferring.

This was one of the last few pieces. Very symmetrical and the details were isolated enough. The ribbing is where I also started trying to use less edges and really rely on the shrinkwrap modifier to define the shape.

I saved this piece for last because I new it would really take it out of me - it really did. Even with a lot of symmetry overall, there were many sections that overlapped one another, so that the even the outlining stage would get intense.

Thankfully there were familiar section to previous pieces I was able to resolve quicker. It really helped to forcefully slow my pace down with this one, and I think I actually took a break from the project in-between at this point. I had been waking up early everyday and putting in a minimum of two hours before starting the day, often coming back if it was a modeling day.

The FOTJ project was inspired by this one, having been looking at polygons for long that I started seeing many things among the shapes. These are some of the sections I think will be cool starters for future projects.

This project took over a year - Something I don’t think is acceptable in terms of turnaround time in the associated industries. Opting retopologise it manually allowed me to improve both in speed as well as planning ahead and being able to see the better route when in doubt.

Again, many metaphors and lessons inter-weaved throughout, and I thank the client for the project because this was also how I was able to get a monitor I desperately need to work properly again.