For my project I decided to go ambitious and model both the Hylian Shield and Master Sword from the Legend of Zelda series. I began with the shield, thinking that would be the most complex part. I ran into some issues using a single plane for the centre part of the shield as when I tried curving it and attaching it to the outer metal brace many triangles and weird angles would appear within the face. At this point I scrapped the old shield and started fresh. I started with a subdivided plane, stretching the vertices to match the outline of a background reference image. Then, selecting the centre vertex with proportional editing turned on raised the z axis until I was comfortable with the curve.
Next I added the details such as the outter metal frame, the triforce in the center, as well as the...squigglies. During this step I also made some custom cuts in the frame and added the triangular indents. After this I added 3 UV spheres for the rivets.
Now came the textures! Had some fun figuring out the UV mapping tool, first creating a UV map over the reference shield, exporting it to GIMP and modifying the reference image to fit the UV map. After this I went into Node Editor and added an Image Texture, piped it into the color node of the shield and was done!
For the sword I began with a small plane the width of the blade. from here I extruded and scaled the length of the blade, after which I duplicated the top half and mirrored over the z axis, connecting the edges to give it a sharp blade.
Then on a separate layer I modelled the hilt in the same fashion.
Afterwards I started modelling the handle with a UV semi-circle, with scaled z dimensions to make it slightly flatter and a bit of proportional editing to make it more oblong and easier to work with. After this I extruded out the handle.
Now came the hardest part, the leather grip wraps. I had to modify the preferences of blender to get a "Curves Galore!" curve, which I modified to get the correct number of wraps, then converted to a mesh, adding thickness to it. After this I duplicated it 4 times and used the shrink wrap modifier to get it to fit perfectly onto the handle. After this I used the subsurf modifier to make it higher resolution and smooth it out to be more realistic. After this i did a loop cut and slide to reinforce the edges of the wrap.
Now to apply the texture! Same process as before.
And the final product: