Years ago now, I took an online class at the website LearnSquared.com called "Design for Production" This was pretty soon after I'd decided to start learning Cinema 4D and it was a GREAT class that accelerated my progress immensely.
The assignment was to visualize the concepts Volume, Density, and Mass. That was the only real direction and it was up to us to come up with a visual narrative for these concepts. This was my interpretation.
I thought sharing this work might be right on time as I've been discussing with some Hivers about art, inspiration, and reference. It's a debate that's been going on here since forever I think as some people misunderstand how reference and inspiration play a part in art. Like with all things developed over time by humans, ideas are built off of other ideas. We aren't reinventing the wheel with every new piece and art isn't created in a vacuum.
Everyone who decides that they want to create art is constantly being inspired by their life, by their environment and experiences, and yes, of course, by other artwork. Above is the visual reference sheet I put together along with the narrative I came up with to hold the images to a consistent idea structure. The inspiration pieces serve as a jumping off point for shapes, colors, composition, and some of the technical execution of where I wanted to take my ideas.
The underlying idea I wanted to illustrate was some sort of alien seed. Part organic, part technological. The seed is somehow birthed into existence and seeks organic matter that it then assimilates for its own needs. The following images were my attempt at telling that story visually.
The first time I shared this, I only shared the finished images, but I think for #showcase-sunday I'll also share some of the work in progress work.
Here I was trying to figure out the overall design of the seed structure. Bit of visual as well as technical exploration as I was figuring out how it would all work and be set up.
So those are some of the test renders where I was figuring things out. There's actually a ton more, but those are some of the cool ones.
These are the final images.
It was a really fun project and I learned a ton. After this class is when Cinema 4D became my main 3D application and when I got serious about it for actually taking on professional work. Fun fact, when I originally posted this, the post made .17 cents and got 2 comments both made by bots, lol. I'm glad those days are over. Hope you all enjoyed. See you in the next post!
When I see your work's style I am intrigued to know what really inspires you to do them, what is your reference or idea that supports it. @midlet, could you tell me what it is?, perhaps in a single word or is this a secret of every artist and we must decipher it into your art? ^^
Well a lot of the work I do is really just practice and exploration. I work as a freelance motion graphics designer and illustrator along with teaching, so I'm always tinkering and learning new things.
The best way for me to stay current and consistently improve is to produce work constantly. Honestly there's not a ton of say, emotional expression in my work. I'm kind of more of an artistic technician, although I'd like to explore more true art for art sake at some point.
As I told you in the middle of the debate about new rules for OCA I think you are already an artist and you make real art, thanks for your friendly answer I know you don't like to talk about yourself, I like to learn about you and the community in general
Is showcase-sunday still a thing? I thought hivewatchers effectively killed it by deciding it was spam and milking the reward pool or something to that effect XD
Is it lame that I found the meshes fascinating? x_x was staring at the wibbly one for ages XD
Did you make an animation out of this or was it a bunch of stills? Those renders look amazing.
Nah, they just said don't make the new post copy and paste, which honestly I agree with. Not too much to ask to make a new current post, maybe change a bit, add more content to the post etc.
Also, lots of people love to look at the wireframes, myself included. It's not just you, that's why I always include them. :)
I began work on an animation, but it was kinda pointless because I wasn't going to be able to render it anyway. A single frame was taking upwards of 20-30 min just for the 3D, then there was pretty heavy comp work too. This was before I had any experience working with a render farm though so I guess I could now if I wanted to spend the money, which I currently definitely do not.
Was just wondering as I've seen writers getting pinged (because they pretty much have to copy and paste even though most of them have added preface text saying it was an old post from this long ago and usually also done a bit of editing like making things flow better or correcting speelig errors that were missed the first time) and also artists who had the audacity to reuse an image even though the post text is usually completely different, and had to be telling people it's fine, the thing that's doing the commenting is a bot and has no real sense of context and early days will generate heaps of false positives as things get worked out, don't worry yadda yadda yadda and hoping I'm not inadvertently lying XD
Yay I'm not crazy!
Ahh yes I've done the taking weeks to render out an animation because a frame takes several minutes to render. Not the best if you have deadlines XD
There's free render farms (or at least there's sheepit, I don't know if anything else has come up since) but I guess you need to be comfortable with randoms having access to the work files :)
Ahh, I see. Well if it becomes an issue I might just mute that HW bot account in OCA if they can’t manage to get a handle on false positives. It’s not something I’d seen a lot of.
Also with the coming HF we’ll be moving to decentralized blacklists so it all might work really different after that.
The bot probably doesn't have much in the way of contextual awareness and is just finding whatever is within its parameters. I'm going to have to look at how the decentralised blacklists are being done, but it sounds like a good idea at least in theory XD I think it might be worth waiting til after the hardfork and the inevitable dust to settle.
Super amazing!
This looks so cool
Good sir
It's amazing to see such detail, and how lovely it's been presented. Amazing stuff as always! I'm glad you're reposting your old illustrations, because the most of us would've missed out on this, and that would be a terrible shame! $0.17 and 2 comments is far less than what this beauty deserved :-D
I am ever and ever amazing by how tech is informing and aiding we artists, this is amazing @midlet I found myself watching the animation over and over again. Really felt like I'd slipped into a vast world made by a spark from a campfire burning into eternity!