This is the first in a series of project related articles, this particular article will focus on graduate work in particular the Barber Shop. I intend on posting these to illustrate my role with regards to professional as well as personal work. Granted it has been a while since I have graduated school, however it is always nice to look back in time and pull up some of your old work.
Actually you can visit my Graduate image gallery by clicking the menu link or the link supplied in this article.
There are three primary works of art that were used on my graduate reel, the character bust, the barber shop and the French cafe. I would actually like to outline the process of creation a bit for each as I think its important to reflect on as well as for those sitting at home to follow along and either gain something artistically or technically substantial from this breakdown.
The first piece in question is the Barber Shop, this is decidedly my favorite piece. I spent the most time on this but was exceedingly happy with the outcome. I had only one element rendered separately which was the bristles on the brush, everything else was a single frame render from Maya using Mental Ray, no post composite work in a software package was utilized for the final output.
Now that I think back to doing this piece there was not much in the way of technical hurdles or other challenges. Ultimately it came down to reproducing a realistic looking photograph of a barbershop. Which decidedly required more artistic eye than technical know how.
The lighting was relatively simplistic a primary area light casting through the window onto the table and several supplemental spotlights casting gobos onto the table to give the impression there was light shining through cracks in the curtain.
The textures are not too incredibly complex it was mainly hand painted combinations of sourced imagery and Photoshop brushes to achieve the final look. I guess you could say that getting this to look the way it does was devil in the details.
Reproducing the feel and ambience was captured by making sure I rendering properly and utilizing camera shaders to provide some of the results you would see from a regular camera lens. Of course using excellent reference helps a lot in order to achieve the final output, which I highly recommend.
All in all, one of the less challenging of the three pieces I worked on for Graduation but a favorite nonetheless.
Model Credit :Joel Durham
