CGChallenge XXVII: TEN - Adam Goldstein

#1

Hey everyone,
it’s my first cgchallenge and I’m very excited to participate. I’m pretty sure I won’t make it to delivery time due to my two children being life-sucking vampires, my job being stressful and my poor wrists getting old. BUT I gotta try at least :slight_smile: It’s the first challenge I think I have a decent idea. It took me the first twenty days to come up with it, now it’s execution time!

So here is my idea:
I’m going for a science/religion clash, with the image showing a young (for sake of the competition, let’s say 10 years old) girl, in bible class or some sort of religious school. The girl is shadowed behind her by the last billion years or so of evolution. Nine creatures, from the first that crawled out of the mud to Lucy, the bridge between us and apes, are in her shadow. She is the tenth step of beautiful scientifically proven evolution, and she is studying religion.

It is quite surprising for some people that religion is still being taught at school, if not theirs than other schools around the world. Do we still need it? Is it inherently seperating and evil?

On the blackboard in front of the girl, written in chalk are the 10 commandments. An interesting thing about those is that roughly half of them deal with the relationship of man and god (don’t worship other gods, etc). The second half deal exclusively with man-man relationship. Ie, how to treat your neighbour. Do not kill, do not steal, etc.

So I guess religion is not all bad, or all good. It caused centuries of bloodshed and seperation (because my god is better than YOUR god, etc), but also guided people to a more civilized world at certain times in history.

Here is my first sketch, just to establish the general idea. I have a pretty strong idea for the top five animals, but if anyone feels like contributing interesting ideas for mammals ancestors, I’d be delighted.

Cheers, hopefully in seventy four days I have more than a model of a chair and table done, and best of luck to everybody participating.

#2

HAHAHAHAHA! I got 3 “children being” ahahaha! I know what you are talking about!!! Anyway …interesting idea and very nice concept art! So…wellcome in and good luck!

-OZ-

#3

Hey Adam, great story behind your idea. I really like the significance that it has. I think you’ve made a smart decision in taking so much time to come up with a clever idea - this will pay off in the end!

Will you be doing 3D?

#4

Thanks guys, I hope the idea will resonate, but I must have a really strong image carrying it or it’s worthless. Yes, I plan to use 3D heavily and then paint over as much as time allows.

Here is my blocking. Basically, really simple cubes showing the overall volume of the creatures inhabiting my image. Quickly done and quickly rendering, it allows me to tweak the light rig and overall composition very, well, quickly.

One unbending rule in cg is, (unless you are a super genius) high number of iterations = better overall result. I really need as much iterations as possible, especially regarding lighting which is one of my (many) weak points. So light scene = many iterations --> bigger chance to get it right.

From the blocking and researching the creatures I swapped a creature or two, decided on all the creatures I need, and made the decision to have the heads of the creatures helping lead the eye from one to another. Also, to help push on the idea of one creature evolving into another, I decided there would be no bottom/rear half to any creature, so it would seem like they maybe grow out of each other. It might prove tricky to sell in terms of the Dimetrodon, but we’ll see.

Now all I need is to model/texture/shade everything and pop into the scene, easy :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Adam.

#5

Way to go, Goldstein! :thumbsup:

#6

Nice! You might want to try playing with composition a bit and have the creatures in less of a straight vertical line. Make them cascade up in a diagonal or curve - I think this might make your composition more dynamic.

#7

KMcNamara is right. You are close to that kind of composition. Just try to start from the bottom-left corner with that lizards tail. And follow that curve diagonally. Should make a lot more pleasent composition to look at. Just a suggestion anyway. :beer:

#8

Hey! And thanks for the replies. What I’m going for is a zigzag comp…starts from the child than along the heads/backs of the animals. I’m not going to change it for a diagonal. I like that in my head at least, it also invokes the spiral structure of a DNA strand…although that is far fetched. My good friend Fred Dupere convinced me to flip the composition and lengthen the bottom, as well as unbalance it a bit. He rocks so I gave it a go. He also suggested following the color wheel to make the reading easier. I refered to James Gurney’s incredibly reccommended book “Color and Light” for his alternative color wheel (You Ride My Bus Cousin Gus. Swear it makes sense if you read that book you’ll see :slight_smile: )

So since I really wanted to make Lucy red, I kinda went from there till the aquatic blues.

In the final textures this color schemes should be hinted at and still visible.

As for the background, I really want to avoid having a classroom all the way down. I’ll probably aim for a oceanic depth morphing into a rocky base morphing into the floor. But this is of course only if I have enough time left after texturing/hair work on all these creatures.

Cheers :slight_smile:
Adam.

#9

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