Artistic Vision (BTS #23) (Patreon)

You may be familiar with the (attributed to Michelangelo) quote “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” It’s rare for me to do this as 3D rendering is more like a painting where you add to the canvas instead of taking away like in sculpturing. Honestly, the render at the top of the post came into existence after setting up the scene. I honestly had no idea it was going to turn out the way it did.

To start off the scene, all I wrote was there need to be a foot chase down an alley. In the process of setting up the alley or any set, I'm constantly looking and thinking about how to stitch together the various parts in my outline into a cohesive sequence. To do that I borrow heavily from movies and tv shows and the alcove provided a good spot to start with. When I think of previous chase scenes I saw, I run through the elements in my head and try to incorporate that into what I'm currently doing.

What does that all mean once I’m sitting in Daz wondering how in the hell am I going to build what I wrote on paper? I think of what I would say to an actor if I were a director on a movie set. I tell them the scene: it is a girl hiding from a creepy guy. Her back is against the wall, unbeknownst to her he well aware she is there. She believes he has left, so the emotions transition from concern to relief as lets out the breath she was holding.

Essentially I take elements of my ideas and expand upon them. If I want to elicit fear, how does an afraid person react? Wide eyes and heavy breathing are how the body responds. Flight, fight, or freeze are the behavioral response. So what do you see in my render? Wide eyes, heavy breathing, and hiding (freeze).

Additionally, much of what is going to be in the visuals is already there when I wrote them in the outline. Like the clothes and snow in the scenery are the natural result of it being wintertime. I incorporate these individual pieces until it coalesces into the end result naturally instead of having a concrete preconceived idea of what the end result will be.

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The above post was a rewrite of a message I sent to another dev who was struggling with their art skills. If you are an artist, don’t be dismayed that you can’t hold every detail in your head. Artists aren’t all the same and neither is their process. I waltzed into this field without having any experience in creating any art and the above render is where I'm at after two years. I'm sure it is possible for you to develop your own artistic vision and be able to transfer your ideas into being in a way that makes you happy and proud of your work.