Ok, let's go then. While watching Kent's livestream, I decided to start already my blocking.
I'll give some background for reference :
My profile :
Hobbyist. I tried to use Blender a few times over the last years but never got into it, only completing very random youtube tutorial, not learning anything really. I decided on an Andrew Price's advice in one of his video to subscribe to CGCookie, and I'm halfway through in the Modelling Bootcamp. I also participated in the vehicle contest after the Hard Surface Modelling part 1 tutorial.
My project :
According to Kent's guidelines, I decided to choose the sword as a goal, but for some variation, I chose a japanese katana. The main reason is that, in my dreams of "what could I do with Blender?", representation of japanese samurais is one of the main things.
My working planning
Each day, I take the train for 1 hour and a half to come back from work. I plan to use that time to progress in my homework. I'll be updating this thread with my progress, problems and questions each day.
Reference images :
Scale reference
Parts
Handle
Guard
Blade
Let's see how good (or bad I can make it)
otowa I played with the lighting for a solid 20 minutes and had a hard time coming up with something I really liked. Still, here's a before and after:
The katana is a difficult one! I did find that I needed to add lamps into the scene rather than only rely an HDRI. Imo the cross guard and handle read better but the blade doesn't seem like a notable improvement to me. Anyway, feel free to take a look at my version of the .blend file if you're interested.
@theluthier Thank you, it does indeed look way better. I'll give katanas lots of other go in the future for sure!