Gone Fishing

Intro

This has to be one of those models that I really like now that the task of actually making it is behind me. I loved how it looks when I finished it, and I definitely like how I'm not the only one that appreciates it.

It sounds silly to me that I'm saying this. When you start out making 3D models, the things you make are tasks to teach you different techniques and to build confidence in using them. In reality, they are a shadow of what you will be able to make in time. It's a bit like learning to play guitar and all you know are a handful of notes, you'll drive your neighbours mad, but if you keep at it you'll go places.

So for one of my early models to get really good feedback from peers, just felt amazing and kind of made me appreciate my work more.

I am my own worst critic in that I often see things that I want to improve upon. The boat is no different, I personally see it as a bit of a misshapen prop. In a weird way, that's what I like about it. It's shape gives the boat character, it's no longer a generic boat thanks to it's quirkiness.

Big Picture

This is model 1 of 3 for a task I had to do in university to earn a Foundation Degree in Game Design during my time in Liverpool. I will be covering the other two models in another post, so keep an eye out for that. Ultimately, I needed to make a diorama consisting of 3 models. This was the first time I could choose the topic and I wanted to try something a bit different.

Others in the same class went for Viking armour and weapons, someone went all in on a sci-fi approach and I think I remember that the guy opposite me went and made a Tiki bar that had a coconut with a straw stuck out of it, which looked pretty impressive.

While they were doing that, I chose to make a small dock. This meant that I would need the boat I'm about to talk about, a short walkway for my dock and I chose a lantern for my final model.

From the Beginning

Okay, I'm going to try and get through this one without too much writing. As people say, the results speak for themselves.

I started by making a Pinterest board on boats:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/adamhayward14/uni-work-boat/

The point of this was to examine existing images of wooden boats, including the odd sketch. Although drawing isn't my strongest area, I was about to sketch some reference images. I drew Back, Side and Top views of the boat to import into Maya.

I am by no means a sketch artist. I knew what I wanted from this project and I made these sketches as a reference point for myself more than anything. I didn't apply any colour to this sketch because I often find that I get stuck on it and I don't really let myself experiment with other variations. For example, if I chose at this stage that I wanted a natural looking, wooden boat... I would have gone for a brown boat with a wood grain effect on each plank that made up the model. I wouldn't look at the idea of a blue boat or something outlandish like a boat that was painted to look like a crocodile. In an odd way, by leaving my sketches plain and even sometimes working with just a line drawing, it allows me to say "What if?". I can see the potential without fixating on what is on the page in front of me.

Once I had imported these images, I scaled up a cube and increased the number of subdivisions on each side. This allowed me to begin shaping my boat.

What I then realised was that I had chosen to do things the hard way. I was using the scale and move tool to push vertices row by row to where I felt they needed to be for the exterior of the boat.

Today, I'd probably use the curve tool to draw the lines by hand. This would make a cleaner look and feel for the model.

For the most part, the hard way worked. Yes, it gave an odd shape to my boat, but remember this turned out to be a learning curve. It's still a model that I made a year and a half ago. Anyway, I cut the top faces off the model. Leaving just the U shape of the boat. I duplicated this and inverted it's faces to make an inner shell of the boat. Next, I needed to shrink the inner shell to stop the 2 shapes from clipping through eachother. After joining the 2 together using the combine tool, I then bridged the two hull pieces together and bevelled the top to create a thick Gunwale or Gunnel (yes, I googled the name).

The next part of this build was to make the piece that runs under the boat (see what happens when I don't look it up?), the Keel. This was relatively easy to make, extruding a second cube to follow the underside of the boat. I slanted the keel at the stern of the boat to make a more natural appearance. Then the front of the Keel, I knew I wanted to raise above the hull to create a ring, potentially for rope to go through as a way of tying up the boat.

Now, the sketches showed a metal ring off to one side. I do still think about whether I should have added that instead, though for the purpose of showcasing a large range of skills for university, I used Booleans to cut a circular hole instead.

To make the oars, I used a cylinder for the handle and moulded a cube into a flat paddle with a chiselled tip for the ends. The benches again were pretty easy to build. I simply made 3 boards and made one slightly thicker than the other 2, which I turned into supports. Then the brackets for the oars (I'm not going to Google that one, you know what I mean) were made using half of a torus shape.

When I textured this model, I played around with the idea that it was a coloured boat. When you go down to the docks or a quay, there are always small boats hiding between yachts. They seem to be white or creamy colours with a fine line in a primary colour for an accent. I think my words at the time were "Sod it, I'll try pastel colours". Would you believe it, that "What if..." attitude worked its magic. I used a gradient effect to get the blue and white to blend going down the side of the boat. To get the wooden boards effect, I used a brick texture and played around with the brick dimensions to get a long, thin rectangle that would run the length of the boat. Using the projection settings, I was able to make the brick texture slice through the boat, so that the board shapes would match the inside and outside of the boat.

At this point, I was pretty happy with the way the boat looked. So much so, I thought it deserved a name, this decision had NOTHING to do with the fact I had just worked out how to use stencils to write my own text. Given that much freedom, it went to my head a bit and I needed to come away from calling the boat something like Mid-life Crisis, Old Buoy or something worse. My solution was to take things back to basics and tell myself that it's meant to be a fishing boat. So I got the stencil out and wrote Gone Fishing. It just seemed right.

While colouring it in, I wanted to make it look like an old and slightly weathered boat. That's why some of the writing is chipped and worn, it's also where I got the idea of adding a natural wood as a layer underneath the paintwork.

Using a grunge map, I was able to have scratches that added to the storytelling of the boat.