Utensil Thingamajig

Yea, Maya is getting tougher to figure out. Current class assignment is modeling a utensil stand and six cooking utensils. Easier said than done. I came close to throwing the computer across the room in the last class. It's very difficult to judge just how simple of a shape you can start with when modeling.

The pic at the top is the basic shape I've started for one of the handles. I've been messing with the points to try and get it to smooth right. The pic at the bottom is the utensil tree. That part was at least simple enough to do.

I bought the Visual Quickstart Guide to Maya 8 and it seems to be helping to explain certain things. Hopefully something will click inside my head and I'll start to understand the basics of this program. :P