Hindsight

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was to hold a lecture on 3D art and digital illustration techniques at Einar Granum school of art on the 18th of october. Two days have now passed since my talk, and it's time for some hindsight.

Above and below are the illustrations I created as examples to be used in the talk. I used Sculptris to sketch the ideas, and then took the models into zbrush to detail and pose them. The images were then exported to photoshop to be textured and rendered.

I went for simple black backgrounds, as I liked the features of the characters on their own, without too much cluttering. My initial idea was to have a nature vs tech theme, but this became to extravagant, and I stripped it down in the end.

The talk itself went fairly well. I gave some examples of how 3D is currently being used across a range of mediums, illustrating the power and diversity of the digital toolbox. I think it's amazing, and very inspiring how the medium can create something as childishly delightful as Pocoyo..

...and something as breathtakingly beautiful and photorealistic as the work of Alex Roman.

I then went on to explain the basic principles of creating 3D imagery - modelling, texturing, rendering, etc- and finally, I gave a live demo where I created a portrait and demonstrated my techniques.

In hindsight, I might have bitten over a few too many subjects, and time management was also an issue. The first part went well, but the second part -explaining the basic principles of 3D- probably went on a bit too long, and was a bit too technical. The live demo seemed like a hit however, and I think people got a lot out of it. I only wish I had included the audience more in the design choices I made, to make it a bit more entertaining.

Next time, I think I will narrow it down to just examples of cool uses of 3D and then go straight onto the live demo, and then let the audience decide what I will make.

All in all, there were a few hiccups, but for my first lecture, I am very pleased. It was fun to talk about my craft in front of an audience, and it was very educational for me as a speaker.

An update on the project I mentioned last time. I am really enjoying myself with this gritty rendering. Happy with the facial features, and I like where the colours are going, though it might be a bit burned out. Next up is adding some robotic parts, and some faunic mutations.

This is a sketch for an illustrasjon I am creating for a live demo at Einar Granum school of art on the 18th of october. I want to show how relatively easy to learn 3D and digital techniques can be used to create very expressive illustrations.