Sarah Cepeda

 

So I chose to do the duck as opposed to the castle.

I knew I wanted a stylized cartoon duck since realistic would be way out of my wheelhouse. 3D graphics have never been my forte. Anyway, this was my original reference:

I knew this would still be too complex for my limited skills, so I created a much, much simpler sketch and solidified it in the form of a vector graphic in Adobe Illustrator. I made a side profile so that I could have multiple references and made use of the guidelines to help keep my proportions at least somewhat similar in Illustrator. 

After exporting the Illustrator files as PNGs, I imported them into Rhino (Surface > Plane > Picture). I adjusted them as I saw fit, locked them as their own separate layer and began mentally breaking down the most efficient way I thought to make the more complex shapes. 

The beak was arguably the hardest thing since it was the first bit I started with and had such an odd shape. I made it once using Loft, but then found the result to be too misshapen. I re-made it again with Loft, this time with a slightly simpler approach by simply breaking down the beak from the highest and widest points and marked essentially where the curves went. 

It's difficult to explain, but picture cutting one of those 1/8 sheet cakes, the long rectangles, but only cutting in one direction and everyone just getting equal slivers of cake. Now picture the cake in some weird shape like that of a shoe or something. The cuts still going the same way, I essentially mapped out the shape of those cuts from a side view and then lofted. 

The result was a much cleaner bill shape, but from my experience in other 3D modeling software, some of the edges are pretty rough and I don't yet know how that will translate into 3D printing.  

Honestly, after that, everything was much easier by comparison. I moved onto the bottom part of the bill which I simply made by cutting a sphere out of a sphere and angling and warping it to fit my reference. I did come across the issue around this point where because I didn't properly measure and set-up my reference images, I was having to eyeball one axis of the bit I was working on and then move it so I could adjust the axis I didn't have lined up with the other reference image. In hindsight, I should have just fixed that before moving on, but I was still riding off of the high from having solved the duck bill issue. The tongue was similarly made, a sphere warped and angled until satisfactory. 

I made the head next, which was just a warped sphere, simple. The neck stumped me for a bit because I essentially wanted a tapered cylinder, but then I remembered that I could just stack circles in the sizes I needed and then Loft again. So I did that, problem solved.  

The body was a bit stranger as it had varying dimensions that wouldn't be easy for me to control on one single sphere. I made one for the front area, warped it to match my reference (for the most part) and then added another warped sphere for the elongated body with smaller proportions. I booleaned these together and moved on to the tail feathers. 

I would say I'm not exactly satisfied with them as I wish the edges would have been a smoother seam into the body, but working with little to no confidence, I started by making cones, I wanted a tufted feather look so they needed to angle up a bit, but I was unsure of how to do this. I used Loft, extrude surface, and quite a few other methods to try and work something out to no avail for a good long time. Finally, I learned that I could loft to a single tapered end point as well as that I could just extrude to an end point. I made one tale feather I was satisfied with then copied it going downward two more times. 

At this point I thought that I needed to start booleaning bits together. It didn't go well. I learned that I had to have closed shapes boolean with other closed shapes, so I closed the holes in the tail feathers. After that, I came across a separate issue, the tail feathers wouldn't boolean with the main body, I eventually had to cut out the bit of the tail feather out of the butt and delete the overlap then boolean them together. I honestly, don't know how I got the next one, but at some point I messed up and accidentally created a duplicate of the top tail feather and just decided to run with it. 

The eyes and eyebrows were made out of Ellipsoids and were just warped to fit the curvature of the face. The legs were a collection of a single 3 point star warped to make the shape below and then two circles lofted to make the thinner duck legs. 

Lastly, I had forgotten entirely that I had wings on my duck in the design and thought I would have an easy time of it. Unfortunately I could not remember how to make them symmetrical, so instead of Googling how to do that like a sane person, I opted to make him wave with the other hand. Wings were made with more Ellipsoids, by the way. Just cut them in half with a cube and Boolean Split to get that flat inside effect. 

Layers on the right side. Didn't bother color marking them since I had so few pieces. 

Edge Analysis. Took me a while to fill the holes, but I'm pretty sure I got all of them!

I'll admit, my color theory is lacking, kind of hated how it ended up, he reminds me too much now of one of those Kappas in Japanese folklore. 

Pedestrian viewpoint, which I was a bit confused on how to do since I think it was intended for the castle view. 

Finally, bird's eye view. He looks so tiny. Another viewpoint I think was intended for the castle, but I think this is okay?

For materials, I think I remember choosing mostly generic or flat because there weren't a lot of natural materials that would fit this little guy without being too unnatural. I think I chose plastic for some bits like the beak or eyes, essentially things that could be shiny to some degree. I played around a lot with other stuff, but most of it was too transparent and I needed opaque colors. 

In conclusion, I really had a lot of fun with this project! Though there were a lot of technical errors and time wasted and anxiety-ridden procrastination, I think I'm overall okay with how this little guy turned out. If given the chance to do it again, or rather if it was necessary to do it again, I might have added some more details to the face as well as some tufts of hair, something I opted out of because I managed my time too poorly. I probably also would have been more detailed with the feet, I feel like I didn't do enough with them when I could have really made them webbed or something. Oh, I'd also add nostrils!