Love at First Sight by Arran Lewis

Transcription

1 After many different images using all sorts of techniques, I decided it was time to start putting full compositions together. But where to start? I recently had been playing around with the materials and textures that I had loaded into the ZList by Pixolator. I spent about four hours trying different materials with different textures and was amazed of how much I had been missing out on. My head started to fill up with all sorts of ideas, so I created a trial run of a landscape using what I had discovered with the help of the ZList. The image was titled the Mountain Pond, I rehearsed my lighting textures and materials as well as created a basic tree tool. It was time to get going on the main image. Love at First Sight. I had been out shopping and whilst out I saw a large sculpture of an elephant, it was beautiful, I managed to resist purchasing it, but it did spark off the vision for my main image. I got together any photographs that I had of elephants, and decided that I would sculpt a baby Indian elephant and set it within a scene that utilizes various interesting features such as trees, water, and rocks. The Elephant I started with the head, in fact the first part to be done was the trunk. I used a standard 3D sphere - 1 -

2 without altering the mesh and set up the symmetrical settings in the modifiers in order to model both sides at once. I started to pull the trunk shape from the sphere and then held down option, tilde and one in order to get better control by duplicating the move to extend the trunk further. Then using Transform Move I pulled the mesh about, in order to create the mouth and ears then finished up using the Transform Edit Object. I had previously found an image of some elephant skin, using it as an alpha but first diffusing the edges seemed like a good idea to me, then that coupled with Texture Master and I was away. I noticed that It was difficult to get the skin to look wrinkled, which is a very dominating factor for elephant skin, so using the ZList I looked for a material that I already had that could be modified to make the perfect elephant material. When I applied the material I was amazed, excited and motivated to keep going. I then created the body from a 3D sphere followed by a foot which was duplicated into position to make the complete elephant, then adding a little hair to finish him off using the fiber brush. The Environment Now it was time for the environment, I had already got together an ideal material for wood and rock as well as some textures to complement it. I positioned three 3D planes onto the canvas, first positioning one under the elephant and the two next to each other for the background. I played around for a while to get the ground material to look like it was within the same environment as the elephant, not too bright etc. I then proceeded to work with the vision that had settled in my mind, placing rocks in various places, using a variety of textures in order to keep the level of detail high. I then brought in my previously created Tree tool which I used to help create perspective by placing smaller ones towards the back of the image, then adding the extra branches to the trees to detail them. After some time with moving rocks about and adding, taking away detail on the trees I eventually reached what I thought was a balanced composition

3 With the main pieces in place it was time to add the life to the image, using an alpha that I created from scratch I painted a clouded sky and a horizon line onto a 3D plane which I then placed onto a separate layer to the previously created parts. My favorite part had arrived, the water, one of the many things that ZBrush does well is water so I was determined to get it as realistic as possible. I drew a 3D plane onto a new layer, and then positioned it so that parts of it were showing above the ground plane, I loaded up my water material and made sure that the Flatten Layers part of the render pallet was not highlighted in order to get the full effect of the transparent material used. Once positioned, I used the simple brush with Zadd on to thicken up the water in some places, also adding some more 3D planes to the background. I then selected Alpha Brush 9, simple brush with a little Zadd, drag rectangle and also adjusted the tool height to around thirty in order to get the right shaped water rings. I then placed water rings in various places on the water, then some more Zadd using Alpha Brush 7, and finish it off added 3D spheres in order to give a bubbles-rising-to-the-surface effect. I then looked to see what kind of birds would be native to this environment and came across the Olive Green Finch, which I then proceeded to sculpt using a 3D sphere, textured using Texture Master and then saved as a tool, re-opened the main image and placed birds in various positions with the main one standing on the rock staring into the eyes of the elephant, who is staring right back creating the theme of Love at First Sight

4 Material Guide Elephant Skin Wood and rocks - 4 -

5 Love at First Sight by Arron Lewis Water Bird - 5 -