This exercise we had to make a prop set. My theme was Shinto, and I had to make a Shield set.
In this exercise we had to make a total of 5 props from our chosen subject. which in my case was 5 shields.
Since this is the last exercise of the period I actually already had some ideas of what I wanted to make.
Instead of going for a 'typical' Shinto styled object, I wanted to make them based on Shinto gods.
With this idea already in my head, I started making the silhouettes. most of them are a rounded shape, to which my teacher told me to try out some different shapes, but my imagination let me down, and I couldn't really think of a lot of different shapes.
After making the shapes I decided to outline all of them instead of just a couple to get a better idea of what I really wanted to make. I let my classmates choose which shields they liked the most and ended up with my 5 shields.
My teacher told me to go out of my comfort zone, I had to make 'ugly' sketches to show of my design more. And to get a better idea of what I was really making. It did take me a while to get used to working in a different kind of sketch way, but eventually I found a nice brush which helped me adapt to this new sketching method.
From Left to right:
Wind shield (Based on Fūjin, The god of wind)
The first one you see here is a wind shield/forcefield, This one was the one I had the most fun with since I tried to sculpt for the very first time. In the beginning I was just going to make the wind part without anything in between or behind it, but my teacher suggested that I try to think of something to make it whole, and to not make it float pointlessly in the air. This is why I made a quick design for a ring from which the force field can come out of. The design of the ring is based on shide, which is a zigzag shaped paper streamer.
The moon shields (Based on Tsukuyomi, The Moon god)
At first I wanted to make 1 moon, but decided against it since it would be a lot more fun and more creative to have 2 shields shaped like a full moon and a crescent moon. These shields could be used separately or can be slotted together by putting your arms together while having one shield on each arm.
The kitsune shield ( based on Inari Ōkami, The god of rice and agriculture)
This god was often illustrated with having a Kitsune creature besides them, so for this one I decided to make a Kitsune mask.
This shield probably has had the most changes of all of the shields. mostly because one of my teachers suggested to look at it from a different stand point. Instead of making it all smooth and perfect, he suggested making it rougher so that it looked like a real shield instead of a mask of some kind.
Sadly this mask kind of looks like a cat instead of a Kitsune, but I still like it regardless of that.
The sword Shield (Based on Hachiman, The god of war)
This god is often depicted with swords and violence, So for this one I decided to make the shield to not only protect oneself with, but to also attack, with the katana's which stick out of the sides.
Since the middle looked a bit empty if I had just used a circle, I decided to implement one of my earlier designs in it, if you zoom in enough you can see that instead of a simple circle in the middle, it has the symbol of the god of war on it.
The sun shield (Based on Amaterasu, The sun goddess and chief deity of Shinto)
And last but not least, the sun goddess, I could not leave her out of this assignment since she is one of the major Kami gods.
The design of her shield looked quite of at the beginning, almost as if it was a flower instead of a shield, so to fix this I added more 'rays of sun'. and surprisingly that actually worked great!
I'm not sure why Sketchfab still shows the parts I used the Boolean modifier on, but I'm not sure how to change it.
