Saturday, January 2, 2010

EOW #130: The Water of Life at the World's End

This was done for the latest Environment of the Week.  VOTE HERE:  http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=177432


(I'm still tweaking it, too.)

I realized I hadn't really done much surreal/fantasy work.  Never really felt like I could identify with it so much, but I did really enjoy making this piece.  It was a challenge, though.  I ended up solving a couple of my problems using 3D.  For example, I initially sculpted the actual water in modo 302, then applying a water material (refraction index 1.33, just like in real water) in order to figure out the distortion of the figures underneath.  But I really backed myself into a corner compositionally.

In fact, it's got some problems what probably can't be solved unless I overall the whole thing, so it's probably a good idea to move on.  But big thanks to the awesome folks at the critique center at conceptart.org for helping me out with a myriad of issues.  Juggling a complex image is so hard to do objectively!







The 3D really makes terrible reference compared to a good photo.  Thanks to my brother for letting me take this ref of him.  I'm lucky to have him at hand while I'm home for break!


2 comments:

Wes McBride said...

This concept is very interesting!

I think compositionally it works great. I mean, I started out looking at the back and came out to the arm and trickled down towards the right to see the background. There's a nice fluid movement throughout the whole piece. I don't see a problem with it. :)

Glad to hear the CA folks could help you out with the technical issues you were having too.

Kirsten Zirngibl said...

Thanks!
It's certainly working out a little better than it was before.
But I don't think it has the "quick read" clarity that's required to get anything in SOI. Even if it does take a person's eye around it, if it requires more than a couple of seconds to tell what's going on, then it's not working in that way.

And yeah, the people at CA are awesome. I recommend making an account if you haven't already.