APPLIED ANIMATION
Simple Object Model

The object is a simple tea cup with lighting and coloured textures.

This is the process that I used to design my coffee cup:

First I create a cylinder, then select the upper and lower circular faces and delete them, using the edge option, I selected the circular edge at the top by holding 'shift' and and double clicking the side. Then I Extruded the edge inward towards the centre and repeat this extrusion downward into cup and in-line with the bottom hole. Then I close the bottom of the cup by selecting the outer edges and using the 'fill hole' option in mesh tools.

Once the edges have been extruded, using the edge loop tool, select the outer side of the cup and create two groups of lines at the top and bottom of the cup, this creates faces that can be selected for the bridge tool.

The bridge tool brings up a box of options which I selected, reset settings, and then clicked bridge. This essentially extrudes the face across to the other face in an outward bridge. 

Now the rough body of the cup is complete. Move the points of the handle to get a more desirable shape. Pick your object and select Mesh and in the drop-down menus select, Smooth to smooth the polygon shape.

Create a light source  by selecting the particle object you want to light. Using Attribute Editor, I set the Particle Render Type to Streak and clicked the Add Attributes For Current Render button, then edited the colour and lighting.