Reflection on Still Life Project

Overall I am fairly happy with my final Boat pictures. Many of the textures are cartoonish although it is hard to get a realistic boat texture as it has a less complex feel to it with flat sides and solid colors. My favorite part of the lighting was the moonshine on the water, the rest seemed kind of bland although it did give just enough light to see everything but not too much to elude that it was day. I feel like I spent a lot of time on modeling the hull and boat shapes, ultimately due to my lack of experience they were not stellar but overall they conveyed the idea. I wish I had a little more time to fix up some lighting, texture and add a little more detail. As for complexity I knew I had gone for a little too much in modeling an existing boat, but I feel like my simplified version was not as bad as expected given my modeling abilities.

Lighting and Mood

Originally I had intended for my boat to be placed in the middle of the ocean in broad daylight. I had lighting set up, and the shaders I used had some lighting with them. Although I wanted more and only had a few shadows on the boat and I wanted something a little more, also thinking it would be good to create more complex lighting. After fiddling around with adding rays of the sun and lights on the boat, I ended up deleting a lot of my lighting for various reasons. Although this then created a different effect, I had a nightime scene going with dark water and it created a more surreal effect that I liked. I added some more lights to reflect off the water and make the scene more interesting. At this point I had to stop due to time constraints, so I did not have great lighting but I had something that could make a somewhat interesting scene and meet requirements, so I could move on to taking pictures.

Progress of Still Life Animation

Progress has been slow on the boat due to its complexity. Just getting the shape of the hull right was a difficult task to accomplish. Although completing this gets the general idea of the boat across. To make an exact model of the boat I had in my mind would not be possible with the remaining time, therefore I had to cut out a lot of the minor details, and make some of the bigger things like the chairs very simple.  Once those were put in, the rough Idea was down and that seemed like the end of modeling due to time constraints. The best thing I did to increase the believability was changing the general dimensions of the boat. Once I made everything bigger and stretch out the length, everything looked better.

Still Life Animation Purpose

For my still life animation I am going to do a small motor boat. I originally was going to do a traditional room, but for my last project I wanted to do something more ambitious. I opted for a boat because I am a huge fan of the water. I wanted to a sail boat, and possibly attempt an America's cup boat, but decided that would be way too complex so I chose a smaller motor boat (Thanks to George Pisano for the model idea). This model still had some windows and chairs like a traditional room, but will still have the boat modeling too. I will also add a nice blue sea and a beautiful sky to complete the effect.