Title: Pu Yi
Name: Alberto Blasi
Country: Italy
Software: BodyPaint, CINEMA 4D
I got inspired by a photo made by the National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry in Rangoon, Burma (1994) and by the main character of a movie, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Emperor, which is about the last chinese emperor Aisin Gioro Pu Yi, so i decided to give my character the same name. Of course this doesn’t want to be a copy of anything real at all, that’s all i look for when i make 3D characters: creating life through the digital medium.
The modeling has been made in CINEMA 4D R9, same about the rendering. All the textures (except the background photo that comes from a frame of the Last Emperor dvd) are 100% hand painted with BODYPAINT 3D R2, 3k square resolution, the fur is Shave&Haircut. I also used the Translucent plugin and the Chanlum plugin in the luminance channel, the first for a good SSS look and the second combined with a fresnel shader for a tad peach fuzz on the edges. I also added some colour correction in post and then 3 different blurred passes of film grain, to achieve the same look of the movie.
What i was after is a serious strong look, in strong contrast with the tender age of the kid. I hope you like it.
Alberto “ThirdEye” Blasi.