Aria the Dragon

thingiverse

Aria, a lovely young woman, is the daughter of Adalinda, and her voice is a beautiful sound that is both magical and melodious. A friendly dragon lives nearby, and every spring she sings to the land, ensuring good weather and an abundant harvest for everyone in her kingdom. This project was particularly challenging for me. I wanted to see if I could create a more delicate dragon than Adalinda and build Aria using Blender. I also decided to rig her so that I could experiment with poses and reuse the model later on. Using rigged models isn't always easy - when working in high resolution, you often have to finish any detailed work after the pose is "baked" into the geometry. Sometimes the initial idea looks good at first but turns out not printable in the end. To get around this problem, I had Aria crouch down like a lizard would rather than sitting flat on the ground. I still wanted her to look up and be relaxed, which made her appear gentle and peaceful. However, to keep her supported by her claws instead of by an invisible platform, she has to balance that pose with ease. After many hours spent trying out various techniques I stumbled upon David Ward's very instructive dragon rigging and modeling tutorials found on the cgcookie.com site - "cg-cookie dot com slash blender cgc-courses slash creating-a-stylized-dragon". The model turned out very stylish in no time because he did such an excellent job explaining how everything is done. He taught me the whole process in detail, which was truly amazing! Because I was new to it all this knowledge really made my first try work well for once. And it just happens that I have never had anything turn out right before without any experience - a very good thing indeed. But there's always room for improvement isn't there? This time the only challenge I encountered wasn't related to Blender itself - but rather making sure all of her delicate parts were 3D printed correctly - which was more difficult than anticipated. The lovely lady Aria also took inspiration from some truly fabulous art - specifically this incredibly impressive sculpture you can find in Ljubljana on a real dragon-shaped bridge.