Panda cube part 2

Following up from my Panda cube comes a new little Panda in the shape of... well... a cube!!

Chinese Zodiac animals

Delving into my roots and looking at Chinese astrology, i did a few designs of the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals.

The order of the animals are:
Rat
Ox
Tiger
Rabbit
Dragon
Snake
Horse
Sheep
Monkey
Rooster
Dog
Pig

There are many different stories of how the animals came in the order they came to be in, but the most popular story of them is how they were in a race.

It is also said that there was a cat who was friends with the rat. In the race they had to cross a river, however both were poor swimmers so they asked to ride on the Ox's back.

Halfway across the Rat's greed to win took the better of him and he pushed the cat in the river leaving the rat to jump off the Ox's ahead of the Ox to win the race.

The cat vowed to be mortal enemies with the Rat from that day forth and swore revenge. It is said that this is why cats and rats have been enemies ever since.

A story of two friends....

A tale of friendship and self confidence, just be who you are and everything will be alright.

In the style of a photo story i decided to make it more manga like and more comical by using a teddy bear and cartoon like faces to emphasize the facial expressions.

The background images are pictures from a trip i took in Venice. I especially liked the architecture of the buildings and thought it would be suitable for a tale of ' love and friendship'.

The Monkey King

From Chinese folklore and mythology comes the story of 'The Monkey King'.

This classic tale was a brief project in which i needed to design and draw out a scene of when the Monkey King disrupted the whole of the Underworld.


The characters in the piece had to be the Monkey King and Yama, the judge of the Underworld.

Having watched some Chinese dramas about the Monkey King story i had a good idea of how the characters should look.

The Monkey King is normally depicted as a warrior/ fighter character therefore i designed the Monkey King in armour like clothing where as Yama the judge, is designed to look grand and majestic. I decided to give him long robe like clothing and olden Chinese style officer head wear.






The scene is set in the Underworld therefore my initial sketches gave a feeling of a dark and damp place and resembled a cave like area.

Being in the main chamber of the Judge i felt the scene had to be in an open area with a high seating area for the Judge to pass on Judgement.

I sketched a few ideas of how the characters could interact in with one another, keeping in mind the the Monkey King has a naughty and mischievous personality.

This ended with the result of a poster like drawing with the main scene in the middle of the page and on either side each character looking at one another like a showdown.

Panda cube

While i was in the 3D program i was playing around with the thought of making a miniture vinyl figure. Looking around there are alot of amazing and funky designs.

As my contribution here is my first ever design which i have named 'Panda cube'.

Totoro music box

Being a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki i have always looked at his work as reference in helping with my projects and enjoyed watching his animation time and time again.

One of my favourite characters he has created is 'Totoro'.

I purchased a music box while on holiday in Hong Kong which plays the theme tune to Totoro while spinning around. I decided to recreate it in 3D and has been a side project i have been working on.


To get a feel of the model in colour i added some simple lambert materials until i texture it fully.