Maya Polygon modelling - "A Toy Airplane"
original concept drawing
My very first Maya modelling, which developed into this animated character.
"Centaur and Lapiths" is a far-fetched adaptation of ancient Greek mythology with a creature that employed my own creation, which blends in with some 21st-century flavours - a robotic Centaur with his lower half of the body portraying a mechanical four-wheeled car rather than a horse.
This Maya 3D project focuses on character design, which serves the purpose of creating an animation that allows detailed examination and regeneration of the body's movements and actions, as well as using Maya's Shape Editor to express complex facial expressions. This character is based on my very first Maya modelling. The original character's design showed a more organic contour with fewer geometric shapes. Since the shape of my Centaur's body is inspired by the old-fashioned Beetles car, I wanted this robot to carry a more vintage cartoony taste. Therefore, I redesigned the character's head, arms and hands so that it carries a sense of steampunk-styled humour. In addition, this revamped character design contains more mechanical joints with machine screws and nuts, along with utilizing Maya's Arnold shaders, which greatly enhanced the visual effects of bouncing lights reflected from the character's shiny metal parts. As for the background, I rendered it as a blank vacuum space with only white colour so that the viewers could maximize their attention to the character's intricate movements.
The music played in the scene is titled "Queen of the Night Aria," from Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute."