The ink pot process. design to render

At the beginning of the project we knew after talking to Dave, that we needed to have an item of importance within our animation, something that the audience could relate to and it would hold significance. Me, Yemi and Depa then went about thinking of a way we could do this. We thought that we could make the ink pot significant in some way but we weren't sure how yet. We went back with he idea to Dave the following week, and he said to maybe give the ink pot a supernatural aura about it, maybe have it glowing, to highlight its importance. I thought this was an excellent idea, however i wanted the significance of the ink pot to be more deliberate, and i came up with an idea of how to link the ink pot directly to the significance of the dove we'd see later on in the film. I suggested the idea of shaping the ink pot with ceramic wings as a part of its overall design, at first this was a little hard explaining to Depa, and Dave, but i had a picture in my head of what i meant. I sketched the idea down on a scrap piece of paper which gave depa a rough idea of what i was taking about, however i then just said to her that i would model it and show her it in a couple of days when we are next at university. So that is what i did.

The modelling

I used CV curve tool to create the shape of the ink pot, i thought this would be the fastest and most accurate way of producing a well rounded ink pot. After i had the initial shape of the ink pot, i then went on to extrude out faces to shape wings and a tail.











The next stage was shaping the wings and tail. I wanted to give the shape of the pot a very elegant feel, however still keep it looking quite realistic, as if it could actually be a pot.












I knew that the ink pot would be heavily used in the character animation later on in the project, so i knew i also needed to make a quill, so that the librarian could potentially use it during the animation. I am very happy with the result of this model, i think it looks very nice, although i will probably have to consider giving it a skeleton, to give it more flexibility when animating.
















Below is the finished model of the ink pot. I am very pleased with the result, and the next stage is to texture, and light.













Texturing:
After discussion with Depa, we thought the best texture for the ink pot was a brown colour, however we felt it was important the ink pot had some sort of transparency level, so i needed to take this into account. I have also added feather texture to the wings, this texture is very subtle, so looks realistic. I am very pleased so far, i think the shape of the pot looks very elegant, and the textures match it.


















Below is the finished ink pot, with glow, as discussed earlier. In my opinion this is one of my best pieces of work for the project so far, i am delighted with the result.