Melanie Estes: Week 1 Castle

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     One of my favorite movies growing up has been The Little Mermaid II. I used this image of the castle to base my design. I tried to put the visible towers in the right places, but had to imagine what the back looked like. The angle of the reference image shows an open area between the staircase in front and the sand pillars on the left. Part of a ship and its teal sails is visible in this gap, so I imagined that a small pier might be hidden from view. I added the large doors because it seemed appropriate for the front face of the castle. I continued the picture’s railing on the front edges near the door. I decorated the door with trim traced from this image. I tried to maintain the appearance of the castle from the reference throughout to the parts of the model that are not visible in the image.

     During the modeling process, I was able to copy and paste many of the basic shapes that were repeated around the castle. I was able to resize the cone roofs, the rectangular buildings, the boards in the pier, as well as many of the gold trim accents. The railing would not have been made without duplicating the posts. For the window holes, I created a basic window shape out of a square and an ellipse. I copied and resized a piece for each hole, and then I used Boolean difference to make the indentation. I later used the same technique to hollow out the towers. The most difficult section was the stairway in front. I made a curve in the silhouette of steps and adjusted it from the top view to curve around the small tower. I copied the curve and increased the size for the larger edge. Then I used edge curves and carefully fixed the points to look more accurate. In order to make the door hinges, I applied my reference image to a rectangle and drew a curve on top. I then closed and extruded the curve and applied it to the door. In order to have the sand pillars on the left look more like the image and more realistic, I extruded a wavy curve and used the window shape to cut out the arches underneath. I finished up by adding flag poles to the top of each round tower and a tapestry on either side of the grand entrance.

     I chose these materials to try and match the reference. The white walls have some texture to them to look like stucco. The roof tiles were made with a cloth-type material. The wood material on the pier is rougher than that of the door to appear more weathered. Instead of choosing a different color for each flag, I colored them all the same blue as though they were all the kingdom’s official flag. I made the ornate trim and railing the same gold color to maintain continuity, but used a silver for the flag poles to make them stand out. Overall in design and material, I wanted to make my model be a close replica of the original.