Concept:
My intent in designing this castle was to emulate gothic architecture. When first starting the assignment I knew I wanted to use both organic and hard surface modeling techniques, and the first "organic" structure that fit with gothic themes was a skull. I also wanted to my design surreal in some sense so I decided to make the towers protruding from the skull. I often referenced European gothic architecture while modeling the castle.
Techniques:
While I can appreciate the utility of NURBS, I found that it didn't suit the design that I had in mind, so all of the castle pieces were built in Maya then scaled appropriately in Rhino. My goal with building the castles was to build one, and the essentially create a library of castle pieces that I could mix and match to make the other towers. While all the castles are unique, they all share certain modular elements. When making the skull, I created the base mesh in Maya, then once I had created all the detail I physically could, I cleaned it up and added more detail in Z-Brush.
Materials:
In keeping with the surreal theme, I opted to use the stained mahogany wood texture for the skull, to draw the eye to the central part of the castle and to liven up the color. For the architectural elements, I used the black glass and foggy quartz materials. This decision came from experimenting until I felt comfortable with the whole composition. The darker glass is used to accentuate certain elements of the castle and make it feel more textured. The glass and wood turned out well in the end I think.
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