Aria The Dragon

youmagine

Human: "Aria, daughter of Adalinda, boasts a voice as beautiful and magical. A kindly dragon, she sings to the land every spring, guaranteeing good weather and a bountiful harvest for those people and animals who share her kingdom." This was a challenging model to build. I aimed to create a more delicate and "Pern-like" dragon than Adalinda and constructed Aria in Blender. I also decided to rig her so I could experiment with poses and reuse the model if desired. Using rigged models isn't always straightforward - any high-resolution modeling will need to be completed after the pose is baked into the geometry. The temptation to put your model into an elaborate pose is strong, but you'll quickly find that the original idea is impractical, requiring careful consideration of angles to maintain a print-worthy look. I wanted Aria to crouch like a lizard would, rather than sit flat on the ground like Adalinda's model. To keep her support free while maintaining a gentle appearance, I had her looking up. I found an excellent dragon rigging and modeling tutorial series on Blender Cookie: http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/creating-a-stylized-dragon/. It was created by David Ward and is both free and highly useful, but it doesn't cover 3D printing considerations (I tackled that aspect on my own). Aria is my first rigged model, and I wouldn't have made progress without the guidance from David's tutorial. The style of Aria was also inspired by the magnificent dragon sculpture on the Dragon Bridge in Ljubljana: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Bridge_%28Ljubljana%29. Aria's story is rather lighthearted, as it was requested by a domestic party. An unkind suggestion (from the same party) has been made that Aria charms the land to ensure she has plenty of fat cows, pigs, and sheep to eat."