First Project: Dalek

The first decision I saw that I had to make when I looked at the tri limit of 1500 and the reference images was which are the key parts to the dalek, and what details were insignificant and therefore didn't need to be included in my model.

I put off most of the decision making to begin with so that I could build the bottom base of it first and see how far each tri could go. The thing that worried me most at that stage was weather to include the 56 tri devouring balls onto my model or not. If I didn't have them, I'd be able to put greater detail into the head and midsection of the model, and hopefully make it look really good; but then there would be great detail on the top half, and then a pretty blank bottom half. 

So I went about trying different spheres and tri density and ended up with the lowest possible tri count geosphere and removing 6 of it's tris to get a semi sphere. I felt that this was the most suitable approach, any more circular would have taken up so many more tris and the only other option I saw was to make a hexagon with a point on it to simulate a semi sphere. I then calculated that it would take up 672 tris for just the balls, so I rolled with that.

I ended up with a 1486 tri count basic looking Dalek, it's far from a masterpiece but I'm glad with how well it went. Although the use of the balls left me with very few tirs for the rest of the model, the model doesn't appear to lack inconsistency in detail which is what I would prefer rather than making a Dalek that looks half finished.