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Influences

In this lesson, I'll go through the key inspirations for my own work,

starting with some fantastic impressionist painters,

and then walking through history to the modern time

with things like Reddit where fantastic images are shared daily

by photographers and artists around the world.

One of the biggest inspirations to me is the painter Claude Monet.

He did fantastic studies of light in different environments.

Specifically, many of his impression sunrise paintings

were inspirational for my work of the delicate soft lighting in there.

He often tried to capture a mood or a feeling

with the scenes he observed in the real world

as opposed to the actual thing,

which lent the name of the movement itself, impressionism.

It gives the impression of the environment.

He'd also do a lot of studies at the same location

at different times of day continuing to go back and observe how light would impact the environment.

One series of his, which was studying one cathedral throughout the day

was and continues to be very impactful for my work.

I love looking at how the light interacts with the environment

and how it changes throughout the day.

It changes the angle, the softness, and the color.

When I create my own 3D renders,

I think carefully about the lighting and how it impacts the environment.

Another painter from the same movement, which was Vincent van Gogh,

is also very inspirational to a lot of the work I do.

I had the pleasure of seeing a lot of his locations in real life.

Juxtaposing that next to the painting itself

is interesting to see

because you see a bit of how he observed the world as well.

There's a series of paintings he did in the South of France

observing nighttime in different areas of this beautiful region.

Many buildings in the South of France are very reddish, orangish

from the clay material that was made there.

There was the fantastic stone material. Having that stark built environment in contrast with the natural world

where we have some deep blues and greens is beautiful to see.

The use of color is very important with our renders

to give a feeling or a mood to our piece.

I often strive to create relaxing, nostalgic environments in my work.

Van Gogh gave the same feeling with a lot of his creations

where he very carefully designed the palette to bring the viewer's eye

back to where he was in that moment painting the piece.

Another surrealist artist is René Magritte

who has a variety of different works,

all with a surrealist bend to them if you will.

One series of his that jumps out to me always

is one that he has with clouds featuring the image in unexpected ways

that's often just there in the scene in a place that you wouldn't expect.

That often inspires my work because I add many such natural elements in places you wouldn't necessarily have them

like having a big palm tree inside a cathedral

or having a field of grass going through your living room.

I'm often inspired by his work

and always go back to look at how he designed his scenes

in this surrealist but still comfortable way.

When I'm building my work, I always want that sense of comfort,

but existing very much at the boundary of the real and the surreal.

Merging those two and existing

in that liminal intertwined space between the two.

It's always exciting.

Now, moving forward to the modern world,

there's a fantastic subreddit that I visit quite a bit

when I'm getting ready to put the final touches on my renders,

which is our r/Analog.

It's a community entirely dedicated to analog photography.

When I'm looking through the inspiration from this subreddit,

I'm looking at the textural details of the photos.

They're shot on film cameras,

which gives a very unique feeling of grain and nostalgia to the images. I try to recapture that as much as possible with my 3D renders.

Often with 3D, it's very easy to fall into the trap

of making things that look too clean too perfect.

You get perfectly straight, smooth edges by default

when you're adding in objects like cubes or planes to your scene.

Hence, when you're creating your renders,

it's important to infuse a bit of that disorder or imperfections,

like you see in film photography where there are imperfections.

I try to source through a lot of that inspiration

and have that up side-by-side as I start to make my final tweaks.

The last source of inspiration for me that I'll mention is the real world.

Specifically, the South of France.

I've spent a lot of time in the South of France

and I have a lot of that inspiration infused in my renders.

You'll see a lot of vibrant blues and greens,

like the ones on the Calanques National Park

in Marseille, France, right on the Mediterranean.

It's a beautiful place.

For me, it is paradise on Earth. Whenever I'm stuck on inspiration, I often look back at the photos

and relive some of my memories there.

For your project,

that natural inspiration might be the countryside, the mountains,

the valleys, or wherever that might be,

but do source those real inspirations as you start to build the final project.

In the next lesson, we'll go out

and gather real reference material that we'll use to build our mood board,

and get ready to start designing our final project.