Week Two: Modeling Challenge


Entering the second week, I underestimated how challenging things would get! The volume of content was immense, and EJ wasn’t kidding about diving deep into the fundamentals. If the first week felt intense, this week took it up a notch with hands-on projects. The focus was on modeling, learning more hotkeys, importing files from Adobe Illustrator, using deformers, applying subdivision surfaces to editable polygon objects and working with volume builders and mesh.

One of our assignments, the Emoji Master project, involved interpreting a client brief with a provided color palette and mood board to arrange icons in a specific composition. Early in the week, I tackled splines and used generators to bring the icons to life. It was a lot to take in, and each new concept felt like a major step forward in understanding C4D.

The second assignment was the Super Modeling Challenge. It ended up taking me two full weeks to complete the week two projects. A fun twist was incorporating a simplified, “chonky” Pikachu sketch my sister drew, especially since my Halloween costume was Pikachu this year. I used the sketch, the style of my first game boy color and the project mood board as inspiration. This project truly lived up to its challenging name—I spent a lot of time learning the ins and outs of creating loop cuts and working with volume builders. The learning curve is steep, but I’m getting so much more comfortable with modeling than I expected.

Rather than downloading the provided project files, I challenged myself to follow along and create everything from scratch, which added time to the process. Plus, nearly four hours of modeling content this week led to a bit of a backlog as I balanced other parts of my life. But I’m excited to catch up and keep moving forward next week!

Week One: Your Favorite Place


Welcome to my first blog post! I’ve decided to write a weekly post about my experience with School of Motion’s Cinema 4D Basecamp course with EJ Hassenfratz. This will be my third course with School of Motion and I’m excited for this journey to learn more about 3D modeling and animation!

The first week was mostly spent getting acclimated with Cinema 4D’s interface, navigating various viewports, working with primitive objects, and applying basic Redshift materials for the "Your Favorite Place" assignment.

 

Honestly, I wasn’t sure I would be able to complete this week’s assignment, given how I had to balance more days in the office, commuting, planning to make dinners at home, spending time with family, teaching a class, and, on top of it all, learning a software I’ve always been curious about but never had the "time" to explore. But there are a couple of things I do know about myself: I’m good at time management and staying organized, which has gotten me pretty far as a designer. I’ve also gotten used to saying yes to nearly every freelance or job task until I hit burnout. However, I knew taking this class would demand significant energy, especially since I’m unfamiliar with the software.

Key takeaways:

  • Anytime I’m learning something new, having two monitors is ALWAYS a game-changer. One for watching lessons, the other for following along.

  • Don’t get too stuck in one part of the project. Move forward and enjoy the process. As a designer, I love planning concepts and creating moodboards. PureRef and Snip & Sketch were lifesavers in grouping my inspirations for the ice cream shop concept.

  • Applying materials has quickly become one of my favorite aspects of 3D design. By the time I finally “let go” and decided to call the assignment done, I thought it would take me hours to add materials and adjust colors. Surprisingly, it turned out to be the most relaxing part, just as Ian had assured me when I was ready to call it quits that night.