My mom had an inspired scene: a palm tree dips its toes in the ocean, leaps up and runs away cold. This model started from just a tiny cylinder and grew into bitter resentment. He was scrapped after 4 days.
Christined as Front Butt Palms. Modeling and sculpting for this model went much smoother. It took a few tries to figure out how to retopologize and generate neater UVs, but this model turned out functional. However I am still abandoning him- the palm leaves are tedious and time consuming to map.
Meet Jeff: the intergalactic hitchhiker.
I went with a character design that was a little less complex, but my midterm will feature a larger scene with more moving pieces(Jeff included).