Not a commercial project, but the final work of my Digital Modelling postgrade studies at Elisava School, in Barcelona. The entire course was mostly centered on modelling the right way, targetting at product and industrial Class A surface, that kind of stuff… Had the best teachers, especially Juan Devant (a true digital modelling artisan with an exquisite taste and passion for things well done) and Antoni Lacasa (best 3D generalist professor), both from Barcelona based studio 2Renaissance.
Didn’t really know what to model for this final work. Had layed my eyes on dirt surfboards couple of weeks before decission day… Dirt surfboards… Invention of the century, I say!. Veeeeery interesting stuff, but just too simple to model. The only proper thing I found out there was Ardrone’s quadricopter. Professor Juan led me then into re.engineering the whole thing, making it sharper and more sophisticated than the original model.
Almost three months later (working everyday at Lightsound during day time and doing night time modelling) came up with the final thing. Alias Automotive was the professional tool I learnt to master along this course, same tool I modelled this piece with. Hard work, but beautiful outcome. Very proud of it. Never thougt I would get to love detail modelling the way I do now, from cockpit to propellers.
Model was finished. Making a film out of it was not required for this course, but I couldn’t help doing something more interesting than a turntable presentation…
Remembered then that legendary scene from feature film “Deliverance”, where two men engage this vertigo banjo duel… So took my cuadricopter model and imported geo into Maya. Copy-pasted it and made a brother for it. Then put them dancing around each other and performing a chase race to the banjo rythm…
Materials were carefully selected, but lighting was rather simple: just HDR global illumination. Didn’t do any compositing: just animated a series of shots, pulled a beauty pass only and edited the whole thing in Final Cut. No motion vectors, not even the slightest color correction. Just a sense of tight sync editorial.
The result was this piece. Very playful, very elegant. The whole course loved it, especially Juan.
Though I’m fully aware and thankful of the priceless technical skills gained after this course (professional product modelling, physically accurate rendering and, above all, order!), trully value thing about this master’s degree and this project in particular was… the insight journey. A path where the task in hands connects the purpose together with the artist, and the artist with himself.
Yeah, sounds like David Carradine has just taken over, but I’ve experienced many projects this way eversince. The journey of learning along making, the making along diving into what seems to be… that ocean called Art.
Began this course thinking I already knew it all… finished it with a fairly sharp machete in my hand, OK, yet beholding the entire visual skills jungle in front of me, challenging, putting me in context…
Yes, my machete is sharp, baby. Yet still learning, always learning…