Monday, October 18, 2010

Pele (finally!)






After wrestling with different ideas to light this sculpture, after attempting a couple of sculpted heads, I decided that this project couldn't be done proper justice with sculpii. If I used UV light to make it glow I couldn't have gotten the nice, rich reds (UV light makes reds go pink) and if I used internal LEDs to light it then I'd never have gotten an even glow, nor could I light delicate things like fingers or arms. I'd been meaning to learn Zbrush anyway, so this project provided a great opportunity to do so. It's been a major battle, taking far longer than a physical sculpture would have taken me - and these renders are a product of 6 different software packages (Zbrush, Maya, Modo, Photoshop, Painter and UVLayout). Yowza. The renders have very little doctoring in photoshop, mostly I used Painter and Photoshop for creating and applying the textures you see on the model.

3 comments:

jenni.bot said...

Fascinating! Pele herself is perfect.

In the first two shots showing the environment, I feel a certain disconnect between what appears to be the painted character, and the bump-textured landscape. I wouldn't be surprised if she's bump-textured too, but as in the fab videos of the sun that have been released in the last years, the heights & depths dissolve into light intensity instead.

Anyhow, if you were to revisit this piece, I'd consider working with the texturing of the landscape, stepping back to the sweet spot between how stylized the character appears, and how realistically her plasma-molten-rock form is depicted, and seeking to represent the rocks of the landscape in a way more in tune with her.

Kathy said...

I don't know your craft well enough to understand what you've done, but I can still say; "Wow! She's very impressive."

Can you post a little more of the story of her creation for us non-animator followers of your blog? I, for one, would like to know more about the process that resulted in what we are looking at.

Kelly Hoffman said...

To quote Lily's Purple Plastic Purse ...""Wow", thats about all she could say.. "Wow""