Steampunk Ladybug & Armillary Sphere

Below is my 2023 Demo reel for my last term at the Think Tank Training Centre!

In my demo reel, I am showing two props I made during my mentorship term at the Think Tank Training Centre, the Armillary Sphere, and the Steampunk ladybug. During this term, I mainly focused on strengthening my texturing skills because I believed those were still a bit on the weaker side and because of that I specifically chose a Senior Texturing Artist as my mentor. I spend many nights working and tweaking my project with the help, tips, and tricks of my mentor. I was planning to do three different projects during my mentorship term, the armillary sphere which would (or so I thought) take only a few weeks because it would be a simple texturing project, the steampunk ladybug which would be more time-consuming but pretty straight forward because there were a lot of reference images, and then a stylized project to learn about that art style. However, because I underestimated the time it would take for the Armillary sphere (which took me half the term) I was not able to even start the third project and finished my Ladybug 6 months after the end of the term.

Armillary sphere: This one took me way longer than I expected, it took me over half of the term to finish. Because there wasn't much textures on it I expected it to be very straightforward and pretty easy to do, but I was wrong. My mentor told me that simple props like these are the trickiest because they look so simple, and there were a lot of moments where I would make the smallest tweaks. Make almost invisible dust, change the colour of the gold a teeny tiny bit, and much more.

Ladybug: The ladybug was much more fun to me. It was a nice change because I didn't have to focus on all of the micro details and was able to switch back and forth between Macro and Micro details. Having a lot of reference images was also very helpful cause I was able to look and compare on all sides. I did get burned out close to the end of the project because I had a lot of personal stuff going on, and I went straight from one term to the mentorship term without taking a break. I did work on it a little bit a few months later.