Study task 1 - Do it yourself

For the second part of the first study task I had to create another simple object using the skills that we had learned so far. I decided to make an apple through its simple contours and structure, or so I thought. I originally made the apple from a sphere shape and moved the most central faces of the top and bottom of the sphere inwards, to create the dips with in the apple, and slightly contoured the edges of the main body of the sphere by manipulating the edges, in which I gained a simple apple shape.
However I wanted to try and make the body slightly squarer and less round, to match a more cartoony style so I decided to experiment with both making the apple from a sphere and a cube shape. I found that using the 'insert edge loops' to a polygon makes it easier to create a contour, after I added these I then used the face selection to translate parts of the object.
Creating the apple using a sphere, made it easier to make the top and the bottom of the apple, however I tried to manipulate the faces on the body of the sphere by adding endless amounts of edge loops and I could not stop some parts of the apple looking pointed. I deleted a few vertex points, thinking it could possibly make the side smoother much like when you delete points from the pen tool path in photoshop however this left gaps in the shape and did not solve the problem.

Making the apple from a sphere shape - selecting faces and moving
the faces down with the translate tool

Another apple attempt with a sphere polygon - rotating the edges
to gain a smoother curve

Creating the apple shape from a square - selecting faces to decrease in size

I found that trying to make the apple from a square I was starting to create a contoured yet spare body, however I couldn't create a rounded top or bottom of the apple well enough. I tried to bend and rotate some of the edges and faces but I still could not make the surface more rounded. I considered using a cylindrical polygon, however after making a mug in Maya I knew that I would not get a smooth connection between the circular top and bottom of the cylinder with the main body. 

Evolution of the apple - the previous attempts and the final apple

I finally created my apple shape by only manipulating the top and bottom of the sphere and slightly moving these faces down to keep the apple contoured and I managed to make the apple look slightly cartoony with the colour addition. In the colour attributes, I changed the spectral colour to a light green which contrasted well with the apple. I added shadows to the apple by using the render, Mental Ray, this render shows the highlights, reflectivity and shadows of the object in its surroundings.

Final rendered apple