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The Enchanted Forest - WorkDoc

Added 2019-02-24 10:28:46 +0000 UTC

In this short fairy tale, a small satyr finds a knight resting near a pond in the middle of a dark forest. For a very long time, I had the idea of doing a short story with a satyr. They’re adorable and funny little creatures, instantly recognisable by their iconic appearance and notorious character. Thus, ingredients are enough of a mischievous adventure!

NOTE: You can download a PDF version of this WorkDoc at the bottom of this post. This was made by Andrea, and you can find a complete version of his beautiful project on the Priapus Encyclopedia page.

Coming from very ancient times, the character still seems to be very popular. A quick search on the internet, for example, results in countless images of all sorts of satyrs, from every century in Western art, in every possible shape and style imaginable. You can find a very interesting short history of the satyr here on Wikipedia.

Finding a suitable 3D model was, however, a bit more difficult and looking around on the market for rigged characters, there’s not really much choice at the moment.

As I wanted the legs of my satyr to be more goat-like, covered with fuzzy and fluffy fur, I compiled a character from different models. The human body is a Genesis 8 character, the legs are from the Minotaur, and the fur is added separately in Cinema 4D. I had no experience with this hair feature, and it took some time to figure it out. But as an experiment, it seems to be working quite wel,l and the first test results were convincing enough.

However, I’m not sure if this is the most practical way to do this. After each pose, I needed to comb and brush him up once more to have him look fluffy and fuzzy again for the next scene. So, this time ,much time was spent on hairstyling during the project.

The setting of the dark forest is mainly based on two separate models (Water Spring by Andrey Pestryakov and Fern Lake by Stonemason) and was inspired by the lovely illustrations of John Bauer (1882-1918). He was a Swedish illustrator, best known for his drawings of an anthology of Swedish folklore and fairy tales. These are old stories about Gnomes and Trolls in dark forests, with still ponds, massive pine trees, and piles of large, round rocks covered with thick layers of moss.

The addition of the Gothic ruins was inspired by the painting of The Abbey in the Oakwood by Caspar David Friedrich. I guess it adds a bit of a spooky and romantic atmosphere to the scene.

The more classic background for the Add-Ons series is a fragment of the Abatement model by Jack Tomalin. This brings the two satyrs back to their place of origin and mischievous behaviour.