Reflections on Toy Project

I made a decision when I first began this project: I was going to make this as simple as possible for myself.  The reason is because I had homework to deal with in two other classes that was kind of pressing.  As such, when I sat down to work on this project on Tuesday, I quickly decided that I was going to do a papercraft rendition of Samus Aran from the Metroid series.  With the decision of what to do out of the way, I should have been able to do a good job without thinking too much about it.

Of course, my warped state of mind has once again led me to make it more than it should have been to begin with.  The result is in my prior blog, and it feels incomplete.  You might notice that there’s quite a bit of detail put into the left and right arms while the detail in the other parts is scant or minimal.  That’s because I tried to put too much into the project again, as I am apparently incapable of doing otherwise!  Still, regardless of what grade I receive, I feel a sort of joyful satisfaction at my accomplishment, and if I had time, I’d REALLY like to get back into the studio and work on this more.

The colors used here were all stolen directly from photos of Samus Aran. (If you are unfamiliar with the character, search Google for “Samus varia suit” or just use this link: http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&biw=1345&bih=530&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=Samus+varia+suit&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= ) I took four photos of her suit—one from the side, one angled to the other side, one from the front, and one from the back—and posted them on the Photoshop project on a layer titled “reference.”  This time I was a little more careful to make the colors match up and contrast better, but I was more interested in simply getting the colors accurate.  The concepts of hue, saturation, and value did not come into play much, though I did keep my eye on the small color variations when I zoomed in. (If I recall, we were supposed to keep the colors flat.)

Right from the beginning, my vow to keep it simple fell flat, as I found myself delighted by the thought of including all sorts of details.  My approach meant that when I finished the project, I had a really good looking right arm and a fairly good looking left arm, but it also meant that I didn’t have half of the stuff colored and ready on a basic level by the time the RCC campus closed.  I was forced to slap some color onto the legs without any detail at all, and though I did manage to get the breastplate looking fairly good, it had to be cobbled together fairly quickly too.  My approach of “detail first” has left me with a project that is kind of incomplete, even if it fulfills its basic purposes.

I like what I pulled off here, but it's left me all too aware that I need to get some sort of schedule in place that's going to help me finish what I start.