Been working on this one for weeks; mainly because importing textures can be an enormous pain. But, alas. At the very beginning, I went and looked for a decent reference image for a violin (because those are neat), and then almost started actually modeling the violin via the worst method possible:
(And here's my reference image, which I used religiously throughout the whole process:)
After quickly figuring out how incredibly miserable making anything out of three blocky shapes like that would be, I actually followed along with the tutorials and more or less just contorted the crap out of a cube to do my bidding.
The main issue from there was getting the geometry to actually behave and not glitch all over the place, and make UVs and texturing even more contrived and difficult than they already are.
I always thought the detailing was actually the fun part throughout the whole process. Not sure if that's considered weird or not.
Messing around with live surfaces is always fun... not.
I thought that adding a full-blown background scene would kind of ruin the slick, focused vibe I wanted for the final result, so I instead just made props like lights and a stand. MUCH more enjoyable that way, I'll tell you what.
Gotta be honest, I was never the hugest fans of messing around with cameras either. It was still pretty smooth sailing for the most part, though.
Adding lights, on the other hand, was absolutely the fun part.
Lighting makes or breaks the atmosphere of a piece of entertainment for me, and there's so many possibilities in messing around with them.
Before I started finalizing everything, though, I did a few test renders to make sure the base shape of the violin wasn't distorted or anything. Very, VERY luckily, it wasn't.
...and then, after some floundering around in After Effects and remembering how to actually use the application, I put a pretty bow of title cards and editing on top. And boom - here's the finished result. Honestly, it ended up a bit better than I expected.
P.S.
Naming and organizing everything saved my neck. Never underestimate the power of actually knowing the names of the things you make.
