Introduction

‘Magic Fluff' won 3rd place in the CGSociety challenge ‘The Journey Begins', & I'm going to attempt to explain the making of this scene in as much detail as possible.

Concept

The most important part of any project is the concept, so after receiving the challenge subject l created a scene & added some characters. I then drew some sketches, after which l started modeling each of the characters. While l was creating the character models l tried to keep them similar in style as they're all meant to belong to the same world. However they also had to be very different to each other. I tried to make them as believable as possible, even though the world is fictional. Here is the story of ‘The Magic Fluff'...

In the land of ‘Dabunlesia' there exists a legend of a bird, a magical bird. It's magical because it has ‘magical fluff'. If someone finds only a small bit of fluff then they will have the ability to fly, just like the bird itself which I have named ‘Simurg'. True to the legend, Simurg has thirty different bird features & is supposed to bring good luck. Inspired by the legend, two more characters ‘Nosey' and ‘Freckle' begin a journey with their little monster friend ‘Greg' & the lazy ‘Fire Fly'. Using his plunger arrow, Nosey collects fluff from every bird that they come across on their journey & puts it on the carriage to later test whether they work or not. Whenever they come across a bird, even they don't feel like it's the magical one, they get the fluff anyway. One day they come across a bird with a bemused fluffy baby nearby in it's nest. The bird is a ‘Puhu'. Nosey and Freckle don't know anything about the Puhu which meanwhile is getting angry with them being so close to the nest. But they are sure that the bird is the one they're looking for. Suddenly, feeling as if under a spell, they look spellbound at the Puhu. Nosey gets his pump arrow ready to get the magical fluff and Freckle tries to reach the Puhu by swinging on a vine as he has lost his mind. What a big mistake that was! Thinking that Puhu is the bird they were looking for. However, behind the tree, the Simurg watches them with a funny, inquisitive expression...

Sketches

I tried to make all of them childish and try to keep their cute styles.



The next step was beginning the modelling of these characters.


During the modelling period l had to change some details.

Modelling & Texturing

All characters and materials were modelled in Maya and then detail was added in ZBrush. A low poly modelling technique was used.

Nosey: Modelling ‘Nosey' was the first fun for me. As well as being the most intelligent and creative, he acts as the beacon for the group.


Freckle: He is the crazy one so in the scene he's trying to fly with a vine, he has no clothes on, his hair style is crazy and he has a nitwit expression on his face.

Textures of 'Freckle & Nosey'

All textures were created in Photoshop.