Mechanical Seahorse

Hello everyone!  This is my first experiment with hard surface modeling.

I've always been fascinated by sea creatures and the steampunk style and one day I find a sculpture by an artist that came close to what I was looking for.

Christopher Trotter creates super original sculptures starting from old mechanical parts and combining them to create something unique.

Then I thought :"Why don't recreate the same shape, in a futuristic reinterpretation and bring it to life?"

The references I used for this project are his sculpture and his sketches.

MODELING 

The modeling of the seahorse was a challenge because I had to reconstruct the individual pieces and combine them in a coherent way with only a front view as a reference.

The software used was Maya Autodesk.

RIGGING

The next step was "bring it to life"

Studying the movements that a real seahorse can make, I built a simple mechanical rig that could allow the seahorse to swim, also using its mechanical parts. In this step the modeling was fundamental.

That was a fun part, especially rigging the tail!

RENDERING

For the scene I chose a simple aquarium with the essentials, fake greenery and some pebbles.

For the lighting I used few lights to create a soft and futuristic scene. The scene was created in Cinema 4D with Redshift Render.

ANIMATION

My final project consists of three small videos.

The animations were done by Emanuele Calò.

                                                                                   Hope you like it!