Self Portrait

First day of Animation III class, we were given a "refresher" assignment. We were asked to model a box with at least two objects inside of it, give them convincing textures, and render an image that has proper lighting.

Searching through objects on my desk for references, I found a pencil box and thread, and I thought it would be a little creative to put the two together because it sorta represents how my peers see me. Even though I'm an art major, my favorite hobby is sewing....but not a whole lot of people besides my family and friends know about that particular hobby. So at a glance, people see an art student.....but when I open up to them, they discover what my true passion is.

I was pretty stressed out about it because we only had TWO DAYS to model something (which was kinda unfair because students of the past semesters had a whole week to work on this particular assignment), and I needed a lot more time to refresh compared to the rest of the class since I hadn't taken an animation class since spring of 2008.
In the end, I think I did a lot more work than what I needed for this specific assignment, but I'm pleased with how it turned out. There's a couple things I want to change about it (like the location of the thread and needle), but I'm going to wait to see what my professor says before I spend time to do that.

Modeled in Lightwave. Took at least 10 hours of work.
I used 's yellow Velvet fabric stock [link] as a bitmap for the surface the objects are sitting on.
Bitmap for the pencil box was made from scanning the sides on my own pencil box and using photoshop to make a more clean image.
Bitmap for the thread was made by modifying an image of a thread spool in photoshop.