OBDF 210-A PROJECT 1: CASTLE


For this project, I wanted to create a castle with a clean, toyetic quality, something that would look fun, small and cute; to begin with, I looked at some early European castles, such as Rochester castle, as I felt drawing from the very primitive shapes of such structures would aid the overall affect of the design. 


 From there, I laid down a basic symmetrical 2D ground plan in Rhino, when I was satisfied with this very simple layout, I added some asymmetrical flourishes to create a more engaging overall design, and then went to 3D.





My bread and butter for this structure where some basic box shapes, and an arch-shape, which I constructed and then copy-pasted everywhere to use for everything. I made heavy use the boolean difference tool for the construction of the castle, as I designed around subtracting from the basic shapes I used, rather than building them up.
I additionally found great utility in the object snap utility to get all the various bits and bobs lined up, as well as to construct some ladders that I placed around the structure. For a final bit of flair, I created a mesh to work as a flag.

Overall I'm happy with the outcome of the design, the only element I don't feel I found a satisfying solution for was a more aesthetically pleasing approach to doors, but I feel confident I could easily resolve that now if I returned to it. On a technical level I struggled a bit with integrating the cylindrical tower into the over form in a natural looking way, and was also about to give up on including it when I initially couldn't figure out how to model the crenelation, when I realized that an 8-pointed asterisk shape was the perfect solution (which is probably an obvious solution to a lot of people but I'm still happy with it). I also had many small difficulties with layout and scale, which I feel were mostly resolved, but in the future for any environments I create, I will make a human-scale box to measure elements against and to maintain consistency.

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