Santa Blast
December 16th, 2006This week’s Drawergeeks was Santa. I figured one of Santa’s reindeer is always lighting the way, so….. (click on the image for some cool zoomage action)
First I started off with one of my patented Ballinger sketches of ugliness. I actually drew 8 different butt blasting reindeer before I settled on the one that captured “that look”.
I modeled and smooth santa and started dinking around with some options for the smokey emissions.
I really dug the way this cool smoke was looking, but dang, it had so many weird polygons it was slowing the render way down, and since I banged this out the night before it was due, I had to come up with something way more simple. I ended up using a simple particle system with a few disturbance fields. You can click here to see the smoke animated. You might want to take a deep breath first…
Next came lighting. I went outside behind our house and took some pictures of the moon. I used a really slow exposure to get all the light and it made the moving clouds streak across the moon. Then I used that with some image based lighting as the base lighting for the image.
I dropped a nice little point light into the reindeer’s bungle region, and another bluish light for a rim light on the other side, with some nice area light shadows, and boom, that was it.
Here’s a close in crop on the action.
December 16th, 2006 at 1:36 am
LOVE IT! I love it at this size particularly…instead of that dinky size over at dg.
This rocks Bry….and smokes…and stinks.
P.U.
Check out the animation folks…really. You’ll be glad you did.
December 16th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Bryan, god,..how many times are you going to WOW me on those drawer geeks things?
You’re a PHENOMENAL inspiration to me!
I’d want to do THREE D just to do what you do.
But,i think i’ll leave it up to you, and just admire what you come up with!
Cheers!
P.
December 16th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Yancy St., Hey, I’ll take rocks, smokes, and stinks any day! Thanks man.
Pascal, your comments mean a lot. I also feel as though we’re kindred spirits, considering both our subject matters for the last DG.
December 17th, 2006 at 6:42 am
Good grief… I can’t help but wonder what Santa feeds his reindeer on!
December 17th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Great photograph of the moon
I’m beginning to think that IBL is the sweetest thing in the world.
December 17th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
June, Ha! Probably the same thing kids eat right before they get in the car.
Yeah, image based lighting is really a lot of fun, I must say. Much more so when you take the photos or create the images yourself.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
just LOVED this one. LOVED it. so funny, creative, and well rendered.
December 19th, 2006 at 1:47 am
This made me laugh out loud! I always look forward to seeing what you do for drawergeeks
December 19th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Once again, a beautiful piece of funny.
December 30th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
The animation was literally breathtaking. You warned us. I am awed by your stuff man.