Another Morning In The Trenches
“The only thing making me do graveyard shifts are these incredible sunrises in the Trenches and Calvin and Hobbes waiting for me.” Jenna’s Diary – Calista – 2733
This is one of the projects that seriously intimidated me after a while. I noticed how much work it would need until I’d be somewhat happy with the end result. I have had a couple of these projects in the past. “The Eternals” for example. Of course it worked out once I got into that certain flow state where all things kind of fall into place by itself. The work of getting there is what’s scary sometimes!
The initial idea for a scene like this came to me almost 14 years ago. I was strolling through my city and noticed that corner on the side of a building. Immediately got that idea and took a photo of it for later reference. When I was trying myself on a scene later at home I understood that I wasn’t ready. Technically and skill wise. I was kind of frustrated and left it – fore years. I never forgot though and I surely could have gotten back to the idea earlier when I finally had the skills. Somehow I never found the drive to tackle it again. Until late last year when I started to dive deeper into Blender. Kitbashing around. Trying out features and learning how to move around within Blender. When that famous creative spark hit and made me remember that age old idea. I kept bashing and created this long bar of detailed techno shapes. Learned some Blender stuff along the way and exported that huge unoptimized model. Of course I would use Vue to set up the scene and render it. Luckily I didn’t end up having any problems importing the object. The scene, of course, ended up insanely heavy and I had to optimize the scene at least in Vue to free up resources for proper rendering. Needless to say – the creative process took a long time. After finishing the model and trying to find a basic scene setup I took a break. Reached that point where I understood that this will be a bigger project. When I picked it up again I started to play with ideas on how to fill the scene and add life. It began to become very complex. Then when I had the city done I noticed I needed something for the foreground. At first I thought about a landing platform. Even modelled one! But it looked kind of wrong when in the scene. So I opted for a building roof kind of part for the foreground. What followed was the usual post work and refining via Photoshop and Lightroom. A lengthy process as well. But it paid off. I’m very happy with the view we got here. Once again a view I would love to see for real!
Inspiration comes from the strangest places.
7000×3784 – Blender – Vue – DAZ Studio – Photoshop – Lightroom
Part of the FREESTYLE 2 exhibit by the AURORA Artgroup
Also on: Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety
Regards
