When moving on to finally making the model I took the design that I sketched and used that to help me, I made sure that I planned it out before going into the model.

full design to help me with the process:

Modeling

I started with the basic shapes, the backpiece was inspired by one of the images I sourced when looking for inspiration which gave me the idea to do this behind the altar which is the two squares stacked on top of each other.

I then worked on giving it more shape, starting with the back piece, the base doesn’t need to be changed as it will stay this shape and I can add texture to it when I do that in substance painter.

I made the back rounder by selecting all sides apart from the bottom face and using the smooth tool which adds more faces to the selected faces, by doing this it automatically rounded out the top of the shape which is what I wanted.

Making the Altar

I then decided to work on the altar, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it but I took inspiration from these pictures of altars, especially the corners and the flattened top that curves down. I usually use the smooth tool to make a square into a low poly sphere so I knew it would curve it but I didn’t want the whole thing to be curved so I made sure not to have selected the bottom face.

With this inspiration, I went to edit the shape. Below is the process I used to make the shape into a rounded square with rounded sides.

Detail on Headstone

The next section was to add the Celtic cross to the headstone as I wanted to add a bit more detail to the back and it would be perfect above the angel.

Making the body

Next on the list was the most challenging part, the arms. I did record the process so I sped it up and post it as a video below but for most of it, it was using a cylinder and using the vertex to edit the shape into how I wanted it. I decided not to create hands as I wanted to use the sculpting toolkit to make it look like the hand was broken and the other can be hidden below the angel’s head.

Modeling the Wings

This was the shape with the most detail so I tried to keep the feathers rigid and have little faces to keep a lower polycount.

The Model

This is my model so far in orthographic view, wireframe mode on all sides.

The next thing I need to do is the texture and add in the snow before rendering.

References

Birks, S. (2000) Chest tombs of the Garner family in the grounds of Church of St. Peter Ad Vincula, Listed buildings in Stoke-on-trent. (125a) . Available at: http://www.thepotteries.org/listed/125a.html (Accessed: 20 March 2023).

Hill, P. (2020) Weobley, in memory of Mary Newcombe, Twitter. Available at: https://twitter.com/posyhill1/status/1282661315929083906 (Accessed: 20 March 2023).