A love of art in all its forms and mediums is what led most of us into the world of visualisation. We’re lucky to be creative at work, and work with some inspiring clients, but that doesn’t stop us from creating personal art in our downtime. To celebrate International Artist’s Day, we asked some of our team to share the art they make at home in their copious spare time! We love the results and finding out what gets them inspired.
Benjamin is one of our Compositors at NVIZ and so more familiar with a Wacom pen than brushes and paint. Nonetheless, he was inspired to create this creepy and riveting model diorama of Pennywise from IT.
Benjamin crafted the house, railings and steps from wood, layered with washes and stains to bring out the natural grain and texture. While Ben still sees this as a work in progress, we were all blown away by the results and can’t wait to see more. Benjamin’s taking a break from seeing glue, paint and newspaper all around his home for a while, but he’s already planning his next project, another diorama of The Grady Twins in the corridor from The Shining.
3D Artist, Christina, is one of our Asset Team members, creating beautiful props and environments for many of our Previs projects. Christina was inspired by her love of the Hobbit movies and the warmth and homeliness of Bag End to create this environment.
Using the same tools and wizardry she uses at work, Christina started with lots of research and collecting concept art. She created the blockout using Maya, then imported the layout into Unreal Engine. From there she modelled each asset using a Maya to Zbrush workflow, and textured with Substance Painter and Designer. Final touches included lighting in Unreal and candle and dust VFX, before she added cameras.
The result is delightful and we’re sure that any hobbit would be proud to call this cosy 3D environment home.
Dani is a one of our environment 3D Artists and we love this quaint and luminous 1920’s British sweet shot she’s created in her spare time. The inspiration came after Dani modelled a vintage cash register for another project, and we like to think she was literally like a little kid in a sweet shop working away on this love piece!
All the assets were modelled in Maya before being textured and baked in Substance Painter. Dani then brought the assets into Unreal Engine 5 for lighting and particle effects using Niagara.
Greg is one of our 3D Artists working across Previs and Postvis productions. He was enjoying a season of David Lynch films when he began to learn sculpting and was inspired to make this sensational portrait of the iconic director for his first finished piece.
To create this sensational model, Greg first sculpted the head in Blender. He created the hair groom in Houdini and textured using Substance. The whole thing was rendered in Blender. We really think he knocked this out of the park!
Lilia is a Junior Compositor and in her spare time she likes to paint beautiful images like these. She likes to imbue a “painterly style” to her works, and for these paintings, she used Adobe Photoshop on her Wacom tablet.
The heartwarming “Pumpkin Spice” was inspired by a stray cat that used to sleep next to Lilia’s apartment door on warm autumn days. “Okami” is named after a popular Japanese fox statue and is based on a hiking trip to visit a temple situated in the middle of a forest. We want to go there!
Scott is one of our 3D Character Artists and creates creatures and characters for Previs. Even after working all day on meeting (and exceeding 😉) the expectations of our clients designs and concepts, he still loves making cool things in 3D and spends his spare time translating interesting art into 3D.
Scott uses a variety of tools and software to create his characters. However, his usual workflow is Zbrush for sculpting, Maya for low poly and uvs, Marmoset for baking, Substance for texturing and Unreal for rendering. They’re fantastic!
Tom Kimber is a VFX Line Producer at NVIZ, and created this labour of love while he taught himself Blender in his free time. His fascination with ancient civilizations inspired this rendition of an angered Zeus awakening his statue on Mount Olympus!
While learning Blender, Tom began modelling the piece using just that software and created most of the assets himself, along with as many procedural textures as was possible. Once layout and lighting were complete, Tom comped a 4K image that best suited the lighting.
Travis’ role at NVIZ is Junior 3D artist and he loves clean, futuristic design. He creates all his artwork in Maya and Substance, and created this gun, inspired by Oleg Ovigon’s concept art, to practice his workflow for Game art.
However, Travis’ favourite piece to date is this high poly model scooter made for film, using UDIMS. This one came out of Travis’ head after he dreamt of a Vespa with a jet engine. He got started on this the very next day and took inspiration from plane jet engines and classic Vespa photos to try and create a realistic design. We think he’s done an amazing job!
