Studying Beeple: How to Create Stunning 3D Art Quickly - CGC Live Event

hello hello everybody welcome to the weekly blender oriented cg cookie stream today is a free stream the we usually reserve those for citizen members but try to do free one occasionally welcome and this one also being the first genre of artist study as i'm calling it a free and so that is available to anyone in everyone's yeah so welcome to this artist study on artists known as people i have been super excited about this this is i think has the record for the furthest out scheduling of a live stream it's been my bad so i was playing the stream as well my fault hopefully that's that solved now let me know in the chat if that solved that was my fault but um yeah so I had the idea months ago and reached out to people to ask if I could use his artwork and on the stream and he very kindly generously said yes ok cool it's glad to see that's fixed awesome and so thank you people if you ever see this I appreciate you letting us do this huge fan which will be definitively proven by the end of this by the end of this stream but yeah so people let's let's let's talk about why we're gonna be learning about people people is Mike Winkleman and here's a stat sheet of sores of sorts he's an American digital artist and designer he specializes in abstract art VJ loops which you know like music that has visual aids kind of that you know loop and that's kind of VJ loops I'm not I'm haven't ever done those but didn't know if anyone else needed that explained concert graphics I've heard him say in a in a presentation that he's done concert graphics for Katy Perry and one of Hort one of her tours he's done album art for imagine dragons so you maybe even seen some of his art before um he also does these things called everydays which is one of his maybe biggest claims to fame in that for over ten years now he's done a daily image from start to finish every single day he's not missed a single day I've heard him say that even on the day that his his child was born he managed to do and every day and so that means like we'll look at the math but he has thousands nearly 4,000 images in his portfolio on top of in addition to everything he does professionally which I couldn't find a ton of information aside from the Katy Perry and imagine dragons stuff just because I couldn't find like a LinkedIn or a traditional resume but um he he's a very successful artist and is everyday is alone that's what we're gonna be focusing on primarily today and and and I think we can glean a lot of information out of those but you know as far as tools he uses cinema4d and octane primarily and you know that's just kind of stat we're a blender crowd here and so at this point in 2018 you know it's not terribly you know significant which software is used software is advancing so much and we all know how powerful blender is all of these things can can can be all these techniques that we study about people can be achieved in probably whatever software you choose quick question from William did his computer ever break I don't know he's got to have the highest in workhorse computer given how how he renders like really intense things like a lot of reflections and caustic so he's got to have a really good computer who knows if it's broken I mean that would not be would not be surprising at all if it has but I don't know I did I tried to be very quick with my communication I feel like he's a big deal I didn't want to you know badger him with with requests so anyway so he's very proficient at modeling shading lighting compositing procedural animation basically everything in the 3d pipeline composition at an artistic sense and I put voice that's just that's how I describe someone who uses their art to speak to convey an idea he's very good at that and I feel like that's necessary to put in the stat sheet because so often 3d artists lack of a voice you know often it's just the the art of recreating something is it's not so much conveying something or expressing something from from yourself and so he's very good at that as well and his portfolio is massive as I've talked about his every day's alone means he has about 4,000 images it's huge and not just not just images like like I probably have 4,000 I don't know if that many like work in progress you know like halfway done models or here's today's progress compared to tomorrow's and whatever these are like start to finish in like like pieces of art basically so he has its massive as far as I know he works alone he's I mean especially with his every day is like that's just him and he's an absolute powerhouse in that sense so whatever you know this is a resume like let's actually look at some of his work at this point and yeah okay so being a free stream if this is your first time here or if you're a member of CG cookie and this is this this environment this format is great for asking questions and getting pretty much immediate feedback so if you can we got a fairly primitive system in the chat if you could like add a prefix of like question like the word question in all caps or a queue or something to let me know that it's a question because otherwise I'm just looking for a question mark and I can get confusing but anyway yeah so that's how you can ask questions I'm gonna try and keep an eye on that so we can interact and stuff but the first thing I want to do is is is just let his work speak a little bit and we'll go over to his website just people crapcom he's got a a pretty interesting personality I love I love how expressive he is and blunt about things but um you'll probably see that if you start following him which I highly recommend so here we can see like he's got he's got these films he's got VJ clips and then everydays and resources and things like that but the first thing I ever saw about people that I knew was his kirk was this zero-day short so i'm gonna play a little bit of that and and let do that do some talking um again it is the first thing I've ever heard or solved from him so let's just take a moment and watching a bit of that for the past few months now the nation's top military law enforcement officials have been warning Congress and the country about a common cyberattack other weapon added to the Arsenal and cyber warfare we have entered into a new phase of confident in which we use a size 11 to create physical destruction a battle is waiting for Internet on US companies thirty million lines of code because it's less consider is it an active viewer well the messages don't mess with us [Music] [Applause] but what struck me is the fact that he was a single artist and he the the quality of modeling oddly quality of texturing shading lighting compositing composition in animation on top of all that that he's doing that as a single artist obviously like it was a staff pic on Vimeo he's got a few staff picks so super impressive work and that hooked me on him and I started looking him up and then got on to his everyday work but before we get into there you know like check out some of his like VJ clips I find them mesmerizing if we if we go look at those real quick I just also on top of being like static images which is what his everydays are like he still does animation on top of that and being you know generous guy like these are Creative Commons he says you can use them for anything commercial or non-commercial if you happen to be a VJ but just for visuals and knowing if you've been doing 3d much like you know that animation it kind of separates men from the boys in a way and so to see some of these clips [Music] [Music] and you've also seen his name's midge on Twitter he started doing some similar things with blender like these looping abstract animations and no doubt he's been inspired by people but check this stuff out it's super cool and now let's get to the everyday aspect of it so on his everyday page you can see he's got a consecutive day counter 3990 consecutive days of making an image from start to finish and and before we dive into those let's go back to the presentation I can't really try and remember the order of this stuff okay yeah so so why are we gonna study people hopefully some of that's clear now with with the introductory video that I showed you and an idea of his work but hello Joaquin I see you in there the audio of the webpage is much louder than the mic so he can't hear you talking oh okay I'm sorry let me turn that down I shouldn't be playing anything more with sound but I apologize for that I don't think I said anything terribly important during the music but yeah okay I'll turn to I'll turn that down since it was recommended so alright yeah so a few reasons why I want to study people why he's had such an impact on me and why I want to convey that to you guys as well is to appreciate abstract 3d art I have my entire career I've never appreciate abstract or modern art in a sense because the way that I've been thinking about it is often I feel like when I was in New York looking at Jackson Pollock's whatever it is where he likes you know splattered paint all over the wall like it was very difficult I actually got very angry sitting in that room looking at that painting with all these people gathered around and you know there was such an honor about this piece and it made me angry because you know it almost came as the expense of being like technically proficient right because my three-year-old can splatter paint on a wall like there's not a lot of arguably from my perspective not a lot of technique behind that even though it's it's clearly an expression of the artist it's like only expression without technical proficiency and so because of that and being a 3d artist I think maybe you guys if you are as well you can relate that everything in 3d is so complex right from modeling to texturing dealing with you v's getting into shader node networks creating procedurals generating animation rigging all these keyframes that you have to add there's nothing simple about computer graphics so and that is my primary medium it makes me a harsh critic of yeah shots fire it does make me a harsh critic of things that don't look like they take technical proficiency require technical proficiency so whether it's short sighted it probably is I'm not I'm not objectively the truth on this by any means but I've never appreciated abstract art and then I discovered people and discovered how he is you'll clearly see so proficient as a 3d artist but also a gifted abstract artist that's seeing the two of them combine drastically changed my opinion of abstract art and Tomaso my perception of being around 3d art and forums and and and online places that showcase 3d art there's not a as much abstract stuff happening as there is like character art or vehicle modeling like realism mainly realism and stylistic you know cartoony type renders that's that's everywhere and those are great but it also landed to me maybe not appreciating abstract cuz you don't quite see it that often so hopefully if that's if I'm getting this room as well maybe some of you share those opinions and there's a lot of techniques oh yeah okay I already have a fan of Nathan and and and yeah I use that as an example again I'm not the truth on that that's just always been my opinion and maybe people transforming me I can look back at and and have a more appreciation for that and and modern art in general you have possibly emphasized the word wrong sure like modern art abstract art my apologies maybe I'm at whatever but like hopefully you get an idea of what I'm talking about and you will throughout the presentation but I would love for you guys to for people to inflame an appreciation for abstract or if you don't already have one and then alright so from the technical standpoint as 3d artists I want you to take away a learning of how complex high-quality visually impressive 3d art can be accomplished quickly and efficiently that's what's important here being everyday pieces he is accomplishing this stuff I think I've heard him say within an hour to 3-4 hours like a fairly short amount of time given how impactful the work is and he's doing it every day in addition to like professional things so that means if we can dial in to what he's doing tap into it and glean stuff from it then then our workflows can adopt some of those techniques and we can hopefully work quickly and more efficiently while also producing more visually impressive things and with that in a similar vein I hope that we can be challenged and inspired by what is possible because as we get into his work as you're aware of how many individual images he has and you'll see coming coming up like the quality of those images you might you might question like how is this possible that he has done this you know like he's superhuman or something he's a crazy gifted artist or something like that we've had people mentioning in the chat like they're asking like did he really not miss a day like is this consecutive is that legit and yes it is but then but it means we should be inspired by it by what is possible because we we have to admit like he is a human just like us and so that's why we should be motivated challenged and motivated inspired to adopt some of his his techniques alright so I did not mean to flare up any kind of modern art debate or anything but I don't know have fun with that I guess and if you want alright so next how to study people that I tried to come up with some categories that would hopefully make this a little more organized and digestible for you and one of them being the alright I've got five so the amount of detail to me that's kind of like an entry fee into 3d graphics like impressive quality if you end up below that threshold in it and you don't have enough detail the whole thing kind of falls apart and I don't even want want to take it to your show kind of a kind of a way that's what amount of detail is it's it can be surprisingly difficult to achieve that detail it always has been in my in my book my experience and so that's one way we're gonna look at him the amount of detail he's able to achieve again in a short time the use of repetition so he does this very intelligently and and and I thought a a I think it was a short course about creating these mailboxes and it kind of hit on that idea about if you can repeat things as long as you're smart about it and you you alter it slightly in a way to like create a more visually complex image while not ruining it with repetition that breaks the illusion so anyway people is a great example of using repetition and it not breaking down the image negatively at all also we're gonna look at the mastery of his shading lighting and treatment and admittedly I use the word compositing but my hunch is that he's not compositing in the sense of breaking an image into multiple passes and then combining it in a compositor I feel like he could he's probably getting it 75 to 90% all the way they are in the 3d render and then doing treatment on top of that adding lens flares and altering color tones and things like that that would be my guess so I swapped out the word for treatment there swapped out compositing for treatment but those those three things are like the in my opinion like the trifecta of polishing an image and while while it may seem less important than what is done in 3d a lot can happen in that in in that stage of the three shading ligand treatment in that day all like is the marriage and kind of they inform each other all right so then we have abstract elements so he being an abstract artist and we've talked about that already and I find it intriguing how he how he does that and we're gonna look at that and and how he how the abstract elements they just have this hypnotizing effect on me more so than any other any other artist I've seen especially in recent years and so I'm fascinated by that you can you can just get a lot out of these abstract concepts and stuff so we're gonna talk about that and then finally the unique styles I've not seen many people break their own conventions and be able to nail certain styles or a variety of styles and not just repeat themselves over and over and over again in that way we're gonna we're gonna look at that and and and consider how he how he changes up the styles okay so we're gonna look at it we're gonna look at several images several is a understatement we're gonna look at a lot of his artwork because again we have four thousand images to choose from it was actually very difficult for me to limit it to just a few and okay question from William let's see let's see I don't see a question oh is it possible to make non-abstract art fast yes William um let's see that was your question right here yes we absolutely were one of his styles one of people's styles is he does achieve photo realism in my opinion like he achieves that in some of his everyday is probably a lot of his everydays and he actually one of the interesting and things about his abstract stuff some a lot of it is that it will hell I plop a a glowing sphere in the middle of like a photo realistic scene there's there's very believable reflections and refractions going on and lighting but then he just throws the sphere in the middle of the image and all of a sudden they're like the the level of interest just like shoots up and it's such a simple thing and so I consider that abstract but it's in a very believable and I use believable because you know his stuff like you know there isn't necessarily a world that looks like his or rocks don't curve kids so in that way that's not a photo but everything about it besides that the shading quality the lighting the rendering all looks photo real so yes you can totally do photo real and people is someone to study how to do that quickly and the last thing remember look through all of this through the lenses of he does this every day in a few hours right just consider that if you're like me and it takes a week to model like a single character this guy's doing a much more impressive work in my opinion in just a few hours so let's start work looking through well actually I have them in the presentation all right let's start in category number one the amount of detail the way I've described this earlier as kind of the entry fee to being taken seriously as a 3d artist especially if you want to be like a believable 3d artist and that is detailed the the level of the level and complexity of things happening visually in the scene and another way that I think of it is like it makes me it makes me feel that if I zoomed in further to the image there would be more information there even though that might not be true he's creating the illusion that there is more there and and as an artist myself I've often run into the limits of that and realizing like oh no my textured my Texel density of like texture resolution of like 4 K pixels 4096 by 4096 it kind of breaks down after a certain place and that limits me and and so in that ways I felt the limitations of detail and even though I consider it like an entry fee it can be harder to achieve than you'd think and he always gets this he always nails the detail I mean and in several ways like he does it in models he does it in texturing he does it in lighting and lighting is a terribly relevant in this particular image but we will have some coming up but like look at the model quality the geometric quality of detail we have like big cubes with these kind of Griebel effects whether that's a texture or whether it's a displacement something a lot of detail in the bigger shapes but then we have tons of these little rectangular shapes scattered throughout some of them reach like spec level of gaile and so that gives me the impression and it's very impressionistic right like the more we study this the more we break it down we can see how he does it but like when I first see it my initial reaction is like I blow right past the detail problem like this is detailed enough I go right past it and I continue enjoying the image compared to if you don't have enough detail if your texture breaks down and we see the pixelation or if your geometry has like you know rigid edges from knots being subdivided enough that will break down the image and can ruin the experience can at least threaten the experience of looking at the image and so in this way like he nails it he's got so much detail going on these like pipes and whatever it is scaffolding like random stuff like it's very very fine and that suggests to me that I can zoom way in and see a lot more but anyway so that's the first image to illustrate like detail quality this one here this one is less on the model and more on like a lighting wait wait it's actually less on texturing detail and more on the concert of lighting and modeling so with the lighting sense how he gets detail out of lighting is he's got let's count 1 2 3 times 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 he's got 24 that's 3 times 8 right yeah 24 individual light bulbs fluorescent light bulbs in these X shapes and so that illuminates plenty of light but what's cool about it is in the in the walls over here it adds a lot of light sources that can be reflected so there's a lot of opportunity for reflection to be caught on on the surfaces now the models on the sides are are fairly detailed you know we have trim and and like they look like some sort of Cathedral doors you know that kind of style but the material if you really look at it it looks like a very standard baseline reflective glossy shader right there doesn't look like any kind of grime breakup but it doesn't need that because the lighting when it's reflected in here along with the geometry or across the surface of this level of geometry there's just a lot happening it's creating that level of detail where we don't question it we we just believe it and we're into the image enjoying it there is some texture detail which he always manages to do putting like a a grimy or some level of tileable texture on the floor that breaks up the reflections really nice and this is no exception we see it in there but besides the floor there looks like very little texture information and all the detail is achieved with lighting and geometry sorry let me see if I've been missing an e I have been missing some questions let's see here people is to do Li correct this does not involve any 3d a dollar oh no he's he's only he's only 3d for the most part aside from some early years in his everyday is like he's pretty much exclusively 3d but that's probably been answered at this point um let me look for a couple more questions let's see from char so he was asking the question no sorry I just saw a question okay so from joaquin he uses a lot of kit bashing in libraries for complex models that's not a question either question beetball creates an entire work of art every day or just hits the drawing board every day it's an entire work of art according to him start to finish he creates it and that doesn't mean that he doesn't have like a library of models that he sources or textures and things like that but like he starts with a blank scene and then create something new every day question is there anyone else that has done everydays or is people the only brave one I don't know of anyone that's done everydays anywhere close to 10 years that is nuts if you think about it like imagine what happens in a week and how many things get in the way of your art and what you want to do in a week I mean I have a kid now and so does people like my kids like eliminate a lot of free time and at least zap the strength the mental strength to like want to stay up an extra hour in the middle of the night to be able do a piece of work or something so it's crazy that he did it for ten years that he's done it and he's still going he's almost done with his 11th year let's see how can that image be done in one day that's not possible right like that's that that's what that's the initial impression like this crazy how he's been doing this all right question will you be breaking down his approach to texturing Photoshop the way he achieves photo realism no um I mean I'm gonna touch on some of those subjects I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like yet I'm an in this stream I'm not going to like show you how I would go about it I do want to if this you know people like this stream and like this stuff I do want to do a stream where I try to mimic some of his techniques and create an image in like a two-hour span something you know that incorporates all these techniques I do want to do that that's not gonna be today today is just strictly looking at his work and analyzing it but I don't know how much he goes into Photoshop I think he uses well it doesn't matter I guess he does in some program he image editing he does like he must do some like tonal changes in the color add some noise changed add like you know vignettes or something like that I imagine so anyway um sorry there's kind of a lot of questions hopefully I'm caught up all right cool I think I'm caught up I think I'm caught up for the most part okay cool so let's get back into the detail I've got at least another image okay yeah this is what I thought was so interesting is is like him using lighting to detail the scene like for me I always think of geometry PIME primarily like make your model complex that's how you achieve detail and then the next layer is like make your textures complex and then if you get those - you know lighting will be easy and all this stuff but like in this image for example all the geometry probably has very little shading information it's not really even that complex the the most detailed thing in the scene is is it's like all these glowing bits in the windows the lamps he's got a variety of colors um small big you know you name it there's there's a ton of lighting sources of light sources in this scene and so as the backdrop like that really details the scene it feels like a nightscape of a city it feels it just it Jeeves that threshold in my opinion of like a believable detail level and then on the right side as if you weren't convinced by this on the right side he's got kind of a framework building or framework structure and there is a lot a decent amount of detail in that geometry but he's got a glowing red light maybe potentially a couple different lights this blue and perhaps inside that structure and so he gets these these volumetric rays that are broken up a lot by that geometry so the volumetric rays have a lot of detail the fact that the light is internal to the structure it highlights some areas that like illuminate some faces and then there's a contrast dark shadows on the other side so there's just a lot happening in the image because of the way he sets up the lights and the geometry and there's not really much texture or shader work that needs to be done as far as the structures but again you know he's always diligent to put a highly detailed texture on the ground plane and and you have all this to illustrate just the quality of detail that entrance fee and - I believe this as a 3d artist especially like you've sold me on the detail and let's see another question from Wilco we'll brink do you think he reads his older models to speed up his every day's I do I think for sure if he's been doing he's been doing these for 4,000 4,000 days like you know character models for example like why would you need to build a character from scratch like just save him and reuse him and make composable like and store that and you see that evidence of that when he has characters involved in his artwork but I think like I mean think about he's a cityscapes so like types of buildings a fire escapes lampposts like why in the world would you do that Multi time's he's probably got a massive library of models that he's either built potentially he's bought um there's enough evidence in his modelling that that if he buys his models you know buys a bunch of models like I don't hold that against him like he's clearly a talented modeler but yeah at this point like he should have a huge library of models that he he reuses and that's something I want you to take away like that's not a knock against against him or anyone who reads is stuff I think there is this kind of misconception that I mean I can sense it all right I've been there too like if I want if I want to give like the proper devotion to a character I've always got to start from scratch like sculpt him from a ball I always model the ear again always model the hand the nose like always model these pieces individually and that's just silly right it's not efficient once you've done it once you have the chops and once you've done it once twice whatever you have chops and reusing those pieces nothing wrong with it whatsoever it's actually very smart it's what enables it's one of the things that enables him to make such complex impressive imagery as often as he does so this use of repetition um duplicates we just talked about this they're rampant right there all through his images but they don't break down the image he's uses it very intelligently and so I heard I guess fun like in the presentation can you spot the repeats right so this this little bracket piece which I think I took from right there clearly they're being duplicated around this this radial shape around the lip but if you keep looking they're also duplicated inside the cylinder all the way down okay so these these look like the exact same piece if I'm not mistaken and so there's an element of duplication but there's an art in hiding the repetition and I think in this particular image these outer brackets are illuminated by a bright white light and so the color looks more white and and when you look a little closer inside these are darker and they had a much darker gray and to me that didn't read and immediately as a repeat but there's a slight context shift that hides it pretty well and once you study it obviously you break it down and you can see these things but the point being that the most important thing is the initial impression and I did not these these repeated pieces did not break down the image for me and hopefully they didn't for you either but yeah so the art of hiding repetition slight alterations applying in different contexts so that's the lighting in this example repeat deflectors that's not necessarily relevant in this particular image but in in in subsequent images it will be and enough variety so that's another thing I wanted to talk about so if you have let's say he approached this scene with like with four or five different kind of pieces that he repeated around I think that that you can get away with four or five individual pieces that you duplicate so we have the brackets we've got just a generic cylinder shape we've got these kind of scaffolding this this radial scaffolding all the way around the edge we have these little I don't know rivets or small holes like these are various pieces that he's duplicating around including this secondary part of the bracket like this piece that attaches to the outer hull that is you is a unique piece that I don't necessarily see duplicated but when you have enough variety it hides the repetition pretty well if he only had two pieces and he duplicated everything around those two pieces all the way around that would probably be much more noticeable but he doesn't do that he does it very intelligently he has enough variety and let's see the next one I I love this image but obviously it doesn't take you long to realize that this is a duplicate piece of geometry like the array modifier that's just extruded that uh it's duplicated all the way down the hallway and then twisted right so the twist adds some visual interest it breaks up the monotony of the repetition that's kind of that slight alteration idea also these repeat deflectors I think this is a really crucial part of his repetitious workflow and these to me are unique objects that that that drastically can change the can like throw a kink in your recognition of the petition and the lights in here in particular are doing that for this scene he's got just two lights off-kilter from each other right there they're offset and so what that serves to do there they're facing towards us and all the repeats going backward can fade into into black basically right so like those are unique that's a unique context going back behind the lights and now going forward all of these duplicates are illuminated in slightly unique ways number one because the whole corridor is twisted and number two the lights are offset from each other and so one light is is illuminating certain aspects of the left side and then the upper light is illuminating certain aspects of the other and that creates enough difference enough variety even using the exact same geometry and if we break it down just how exact the geometry is um you know he's duplicating he's mirroring from top to bottom right so starting about here and over to the middle like this cross-section this little L shape he's mirroring it vertically and horizontally so he's done even though it looks super complex he's not done that much modeling and it starts to make sense like how he was able to do this in a couple hours and then the repeat the repeat deflector idea it's not hard to throw a lamp in there right like that's much easier to throw a lamp off set them and then you get a variety of reflective quality it's much easier to do that then then try and model more and and so in that way I find that repeat deflector idea really powerful for breaking up the repetition and just making this a complex pleasing image that you can lose yourself to and not check out because of the repetition let's see you know the questions that I'm missing from William is octane particularly fast I've never used octane I've heard it compared to cycles pretty well so in my the general understanding they they do they're very similar render engines that's not to say that octane is fast I mean think about it like if he spends - - okay maybe I should also say I don't imagine that he's doing the render time within that two to four hours right I would say that he's creating the whole 3d scene it within two to four hours and then rendering over night right because he renders them fairly big they're very clean renders especially when he gets into the caustic stuff that that does not render quickly and so I believe that he renders overnight or whatever and I don't count that against him you know like how by how quickly he's creating the imagery but um I mean cycles would be able to render this overnight no problem and whether octane can do it super fast he but also might have a GPU I think I've heard him say he has a GPU which enables him to render faster certainly than me only on CPU for example but I don't know I would challenge you to fight the urge to focus on the tools again it's 2018 blender has a good reputation of a quality software like I really just don't I don't I don't think people would say it's without a doubt the tools right I don't think it would give the credit to that um in fact I feel like I've heard him say that in a private one of his presentations but um I don't think the tools are not important here that's not the main thing it's more his technique you know like all all all render engines at this point have nice glossy reflections and GI based lighting and volume metrics and stuff like that so the tools are not what's important here it is absolutely the technique next okay this is I think this is the last repetitious one um okay so this little capsule with the human inside of it and to me that if you just isolate the capsule by itself that's I can imagine that taking like an hour hour and a half to create like to model the this human character he uses in multiple images we'll see another one where he uses the human this human-like musculature Anatomy model so he reuses that he throws that inside of it and then duplicates the entire thing across the scene so we have three main duplicates but then we also see a few in the background but he rotates the duplicates right so we so we can assume that as he models around the object he's varying the model quality so that when he rotates it it could arguably be a different capsule or something at least unique enough so that it doesn't look like a 100% duplicate you can see that the lighting is a little different on the bottom side here compared to over here that implies that he it's different you know based on where in the circle like the details that um that's an effective way to duplicate rotate and get more more bang for your buck um and surprisingly the more I studied this I was like oh wait he didn't even change the pose of the character like they're all in the exact same pose whereas he's clearly has that guy rigged I would have sumed he'd like moved the character's arms a little bit made him a little unique but I don't think he did so maybe he's just running out of time it didn't even affect me I had to study the image to realize that so in that way like he's succeeding and hiding the repetition the difference in lighting right so you can break up repetition that way he's got a strong key light from the left side we can see from the blue glow and in a a more subtle light on the right side down here another different color blue but but but then he has probably just a plain on the top and bottom that serves with this texture to break it up and when you break it down like I hope you're getting that it is it's doable right it is doable in that amount of time he's only human so he's just very very good at 3d production very good very talented at that but he's not able to do what would take someone 10 hours in to you know just just I'm like doing the exact same workflow he's just working super cleverly and in a way that hopefully motivates you inspires you to adopt some of these techniques um question when do you when you zoom in you see grain do you think it's because of the insufficient amount of samples or is it a deliberate use of grain that's a good question that I've wondered myself because there is often grain and and we'll see a little bit later that he also does photography and if I recall there's generally grain in the photography too so there's a stylistic reason for grain but also we know as 3d artists there is a practical reason for grain not having enough samples and in this case we see grain particularly in the volumetric s-- so maybe that had some grain but like it's also it's very clear in the the ground and the ceiling so like it could serve as like what am I trying to say dust particles in the in the volumetrics so I think it's probably a mixture of both it's probably some render sample limitations and as well as a stylistic thing because that you do see green a lot in his images and and they don't ruin it you know it's another way that they don't taint the image I don't look at it and be like ooh you should have added more samples no it's not that way at all like Omar I think your think you're poking fun of me but let's see any other questions I'm missing okay so from Khalil it's great images but it seems he copied ideas from science science fiction movies there's absolutely a science fiction theme running but keep in mind we've looked at like four or five images at a four thousand you're gonna see a lot more coming up he's he is not guilty of staying in his box he does a lot of things so just just hold on a second you'll see a lot more not to say that he absolutely probably is inspired by science fiction movies but he's also inspired by 70s era stuff 80's 90's kind of things just just hold on a second I like renders where I like renders that are photorealistic except without noise or Lynn's imperfections okay so um then you might not like that about people like he he utilizes Lynn's imperfections and and lens flares and obviously noise I like that stuff I think it does come down to a preference I like seeing that in photographs that I take I like seeing that in my renders I just think it it's subjective thing but I think clean renders are often boring personally but this is just comes to a personal thing but I like the way people handles it but I understand people not liking it all right so that's it repetition now the mastery of shading and lighting and treatment the benefits of this is that you can require it you can get more out of your models than you might think right there's less pressure on the models to be to carry the the mantle of detail or carry the mantle of visual impressiveness and in this artwork in my opinion is a great example of if you really look at it the model is probably three or four different types of like cathedral tower shapes that is duplicated around and around to create this this castle you know like there's a I forget the name of it there's a famous place I think in Europe that that has a castle like like structure on a rock and the tide comes up and then you can't get to it and the tide goes down and you can walk to it anyway I forgot what it's called if anyone knows let me know but um anyway like he's created whoops he's created this shape by probably duplicating from what I can see like if you look there are duplicates that's that's a duplicate of this one this Cathedral shape is let's see if we can find another duplicate of that man like yeah I think he's just duplicated them smaller in here here's another okay yeah you see the the spire with the round ball here's a spire with the round ball anyway um there are just repeats but they don't even have that much texture information if any at all it looks like a gray model if you really look closely at it and then he duplicated that entire castle structure threw it in the background rotated it so that we have you know this lone spire or lone Tower on the opposite side as it is over here so he's got a lot of geometric information quickly and then how he breaks it up and makes it makes it appealing to look at is the the shading and lighting treatment so look at the the water ripples right this is something he uses a lot add a plane with some water ripples and some reflection and you get a ton of visual interest on the bottom side of your image right and that's all it is it's super simple the the terrain looks like maybe some a texture that he he probably reuses since he does a lot of terrain um but there's little to no texture information on there within the castle structure there's a lot of lights placed that are illuminating both from below like you can see it illuminating up the side of the of the buildings and the variety and the lighting makes that model much more than it probably is you know there's you're getting a lot more out of those models so so yeah things to look at in in this vein are like the fog he uses that a lot atmospheric fog that creates a depth to the image and then these other ones don't really well reflections in general in addition to just being water ripples you'll see him use reflections a lot just to multiply the level of detail and let's see let's go to the next one question from Omar do you think that people's style is an example of composition triumphs over all you know I I was trying to think of how to address that specifically the the whole compositional aspect so he we know he does photography well we can see that on his website so he's got compositional understanding through photography and in everydays he's talked about like his his goal with them is to improve as an artist and to learn new things and literally practice making perfect and shown to the world for everyone to see and so he said that he wants to work on like certain years you know he'll want to improve specific aspects of his workflow and I know composition is I'm just not as composition to me is still more of an ethereal concept so I don't I know enough to to know and I enjoy a composition I don't know enough to like break it down specifically so that said I do think given how long people has been working on this working on his skills he is a compositional a compositional significant compositional artist and you can look to him for inspiration and for valid approaches to composition I just don't know how to break it down and that's a little on me I'm trying to learn more about composition but it's not my strong suit let's see hello Jeff don't don't be afraid to use Photoshop yeah amen amen to that and the treatment aspect super important and super super useful okay so yes we have from from thigh bolt Burton great composition two basic shapes triangles mostly rules of thirds yeah so you might not probably know more about composition than me could you study Renata Martinez yeah that's another thing I want to maybe suggest at the end if anyone else has suggestions for artists to study and in later streams yeah I'm open to those suggestions how did he do the rainbow flare I think oh right here is what I think you're talking about well if it were me I don't know exactly how he did it but if it were me you can you can google search lens flares right um well let's let's do better than Google search let's create search.creativecommons.org so this is where I like to find a Flickr I find it has gives the most results but let's look up lens flare and since these are CC copyright I'm sorry I'm Creative Commons like you can use this for for basically anything but usually you'll find Lin's flares taken with a black background I mean let me change the wording maybe it's gonna be hard to extract it out of here but like so if you could extract it let's say that's where your rainbow flares coming from I've done this a lot so I forget where what what search terms I use specifically let me try a different one well this example kind of failed but that's weird I've done this many times where the yeah I'm not sure why I'm not finding them maybe I had to search somewhere else let's try one more and then we'll get off of this no that's yeah it's not it pick something yeah yeah that's it let's just try flare lens flare alpha that's a good one or Internet it's kind of well I'm sorry I did not I'm gonna I'm gonna go on but unfortunately okay there we go ah man I'm coming up okay here's an example this is not specifically the rainbow color that you're talking about but this isn't is an image that can be added with the add operation over top of an image over top of your render and you've got you know the the lens effects and you can dial in how much you want this is another one it's maybe not super high quality but um here's another kind of poor quality one this is how you go about it is how I would go about it and in the case of people and he uses him pretty subtly but I think it's just an image that he pastes overtop of of this image right and and does it as an addition kind of thing it doesn't need to be super complex you know like there he's not getting actual lens flares in the render camera but yeah that's it kinda how he does it I'm certain I'm fairly certain does people have any image that took him a week to make if there are only day's work imagine if he puts more time well but yeah that's a good point because he does professional work too obviously he's doing work for like you know Katy Perry's concert visuals so he's probably not doing that in a day he's probably spending weeks on that stuff and the short film I showed you I imagine that took a while not just a day but yeah we're even though we're just studying on the on the every day's like that's kind of what I want you to get out of it that what is possible in an everyday scenario just type it JJ Abrams that's pretty funny yeah good call okay cool all right so we're back on the the mastery of shading lighting and treatment back to this Emma okay yeah so the geometry in this image registers to me as nothing to write home about it's not super detailed there it's all very harsh edged right it doesn't like anything is is model for smooth like like a subdivision surface modifier but there's enough detail to register as buildings and it also helps that most of the buildings we're looking at at almost parallel angles so I kind of you know if the buildings were like this you can see the detail more bluntly but if you if you rotate like this the detail kind of compounds on top of each other all that to say it's making it look more complex and maybe I think it is and then on top of that look at the amount of light sources that are in the scene we've got something pink coming from somewhere I don't really know maybe maybe there's a sign you know the logic is a sign above this this the screen the the frame that's like casting this pink light we've got light coming from inside a window that makes that makes sense we got another pink light on the back back wall which is very simple so it kind of illustrates like how simple the geometry is a green light somewhere in there purple light so all of these different lights um make for a much more interesting unique image and that is him i I would guess like playing with light and just showcasing like how powerful it is and how when you don't have to spend so much time on the model it's gonna be easier to let the light do a lot of this visually interesting work again like always there's a grunge texture there's some sort of high resolution texture on the ground that breaks stuff up you know he's got a rock model that he just threw in there duplicated it rotated around probably scaled maybe you did that procedurally like we could do that with particles and just stick it to a surface and let's see anything else in here there's not really volume metrics he typically does have like a glow around his light sources and and that really does help to sell this super bright impression of the lights and and I imagine that that is a post process it's part of the treatment that he adds that let's go on to the next one this one to me is just a straight-up architectural visualization image where all the geometry is very very simple you know primitive very simple there's a even a simple texture a tileable you know would like texture maybe a concrete sort of texture but very very short work he's made of the modeling and of the texture work but it's the lighting and it's the quality of the global illumination that illuminates this entire space that makes things interesting right so he doesn't just leave the corner of the room here as a big square he like throws in some angled structural bits right and all of a sudden we've got interesting shadows happening and how simple is it just to duplicate these pieces around and then the the balls of glass the glass orbs like there that's one of an abstract element that's just there - I think add visual interest I don't know there might be a meaning behind it but what that is cool for is it takes everything behind it and distorts it in a unique way and then displays it to you on the other side and so that adds visual interest as levels of detail and because of the shading and lighting especially this image just shines metaphorically and literally so this is a really cool image I think it's photo real in my opinion so whoever was asking it like doing photo real images quickly as well and let's see so this is the last one I believe on material and lighting what I'm but my face is drawn to my face my eyes are drawn to being a 3d artist is the quality of the reflections on the floor I love a good grunge breakup of reflections it just makes all the colors dance and very themselves in really unique ways it's very tangible right like I can feel in my with my fingertips like what the grime is like on the ground I don't know I just love the quality of that texture and it's quite simple to add you know you can find grunge and grime textures on the internet very simply now that's pretty much all it is it's just a plane and he's he's procedurally adding I assume procedurally like these the wireframe on the on the ground plane like we know how we can do that with the wire modifier and so if you think about it the only complex thing in the image is happening right here in the middle so he's got some sort of fracture modifier that that blende doing you know the blenders equivalent sort of thing that has broken the big simple sphere and like makes all these shards of geometry that he's also scattered on the ground a little bit and I think he's probably added a material like we can see evidence here of various colors just glowing emitting off of the various shards and that creates this very rainbow II like prism type appearance and that's where all the details happening and any and he gets extra mileage by the reflection on the ground you know like reflection that idea of mirroring the detail it's already in the scene and so tons of visual candy happening right in the middle of the image but then if you think about it and look outside the ground plane very simple it's not hard to do this wireframe business you know it's not time-consuming rather and in a very simple terrain in the background the majority of this sphere is just a simple sphere a sky texture and all of that I think makes you focus into the image into the center of the image with these two people and and just in the compositional sense like draws you in to where most things are happening but it also makes it when you realize how simple the rest of the scene is it kind of makes sense how it's achievable within a few hours so anyway I really want to showcase and point to the fact that he is a master of these technical skills shading lighting treatment he's a very good model or two he's doing simulation breaking you know fracturing this object he he is not he is not shirking any technical skills in order to create this imagery he's just he's a master at it and therefore he knows how to how to milk everything that the that the skills can give you any milk sit and he gets the most out of it and in a short amount of time - so really really powerful use of shading lighting and treatment see if I'm missing any questions here we go could we make think it's easy cookie to spend a week doing a be challenge lob poll contest that would be awesome I'd be fun if I'm if I'm honest I would love to see some more abstract things being posted to the gallery not that there aren't examples there's some really good examples of that already from an artist that I'm blanking on the name but who does it in blender but yeah it'd be cool to see more of this for sure a check on tests specifically you know we that that word always gets thrown around with us and we do have a contest format on our website but the big problem is just trying to get somebody to run it like we've got so many so many balls that we're juggling right now that contest is just not able to fit in our in our priority list but that would be sweet to do a people challenge maybe we can start a thread in the forum and just you know do it casually or something let me see if I'm missing any other questions question do you think it's basic omission on those polls or something more complex shading I think you're talking about this image here you know I'll bet I would bet it's either a cylinder or a plane the reason actually I'll bet it's a cylinder because a cylinder will still render when it's glowing like that it'll I think he I mean let me back up and calm down I think it's a cylinder for practical reasons because the cylinder will emit light in all directions you know in a vertically all directions horizontally but when you rip when you render it it looks just like planes right and I would guess that that's the the appearance he wanted just these simplistic 2d planes but for practical reasons like it you know if you think of adding an area light just a plane there's a harsh line that happens where the back side and the front side illuminate but right on the edge it doesn't illuminate so that's what makes me think he's probably doing a cylinder that would just make the most sense to me all right so yeah mastery of shading and lighting and treatment the abstract elements I love this part this is this this is a very mesmerizing part of his artistry in my opinion and why it's so unique to me and new to me is my history is kind of in realism especially like make it match reality be a little creative in that but mostly limit yourself to what is possible in reality whereas like this keep this image right here I love the idea of like ignore reason and just make something glow that's kind of how I summarized it when I look from like a practical like recreative part of it myself like as an artist myself like just make stuff glow right so we have these bars just seemingly randomly like intersecting our character but if we break it down before we get to those bars those glowing bars like we have that character that we've already seen before he's kind of kneeling he has high resolution textures sure but um you know as a character he's probably not the most impressive character example that we've ever seen you know we can imagine creating it's a it's a body with with a muscular and anatomical texture on top of it but my guess is he also knows that and so he lights it very interestingly he leaves more to the imagination he's not he's not got a key light above and then a a world environment that's just lighting up the entire texture there's there's a contrast from between the light and shadow that's that's hides enough of the character I guess that's my roundabout way of saying that the character is not the most interesting part of the image and and so you have the character he's kind of kneeling there's a reflective surface there's a light above but then all of a sudden you throw those bars in and this thing becomes something very interesting very quickly the reflections all of a sudden had these beautiful gradients to deal with the glows that he added in treatment like there's it's like it goes from purple to a greenish to a red to back to purple like it seems like there's always a gradient thing that should have been another bullet point is his use of gradients is so widespread that's a very important thing to consider even his glowy bits like right here like there's a gradient there's a variety in color among them and anyway to me this this I love this image because it just represents like throw something glowy in there the fact that primitive shapes can be fascinating right so we have these R in seemingly random prisms not prisms um pyramids right there just laying on the ground you know let's give it some meaning let's say that it it is it mimics this character is like cuz as he's kneeling and like you know holding his temple and stuff it does kind of mimic that shape so maybe there's some meaning there but also it just serves to make the image a little more interesting it gives something to break up the reflection and and to give some play off of off of these bars even more so and this is another example where less can be more in my opinion like there's not that much happening in the scene and but still we get a lot of visual interesting things to feast our eyes upon and so I think this primitive this abstract element just throwing the Rays in there it makes us think like like when it's abstract we've never seen this before it's like oh that's different like I'm intrigued already like look at it it's just like intersecting his his thighs and stuff it just makes you think way more than I guess I think it can make you think way more than non abstract things just realism and stuff like that so let's look at some more he uses this technique a lot well in general this whole image is kind of abstract and and just think of if we break it down how it can be created you've got a cylindrical structure that's creating this whole and then procedurally you can create a texture that that does these jut out spike like things and so you can generate those spikes procedurally geometrically but you can also create the the Rings right in various intensities going down the length of the cylinder and so like that would be very easy to create if you if you are aware of like well in blenders context like what you can do procedurally how to enable you know displacement and stuff like that and so that's really not that difficult it's very interesting to look at especially I like how his his his his rings tend to glow a little more at the ends of the so it has this like fire what do you call it fiberglass is that what it is fiber no optical crap like FiOS fiber optics there we go like that kind of appearance to it and then the coolest thing about the image to me is how he throws in these spheres are they are they clear and and refractive I don't know or are they just like chrome spheres my guess would be Chrome because that would be easier to render but he populates them he scatters and throughout the image he off centers the composition of the tube so it's in the you know bottom right corner bottom right third and it's just interesting to look at right like this could yeah I think to me this is one of the ones that clicked with me after I broke it down like yeah this can absolutely be done in that amount of time and yay yay for us like we can learn from him and he's so learned from his his workflow so that's another example of abstract element and this one to me is another example of just throwing something in the scene that glows the whole surrounding scene is actually quite detailed the rock quality both geometrically shading texture-wise like all of it beautiful and I would guess that he did not he did not sculpt this or Creek or model it within the time frame it's probably part of his library just given how detailed it is and so you throw that in there you create the landscape throw your people you pose them and and and what I find myself doing once he throws once he puts that column of light down the center is like I find myself being drawn into the image the way that the people are drawn to that same column in the image right there just they look like zombies being herded into this bizarre column of light and I find myself doing that as well and and I just would never think of doing that in my own workflow up until seeing people's work like I I don't know it would be a much more boring if it was just if there's nothing to look at that column of light wasn't so you know moth to the flame sort of thing so I don't know it's really challenged me to realize throat like this experiment like gets practice throwing shapes into your scene making them glow because the glowing is important because it adds shadows to the scene it adds reflections to the scene generally very high contrast things hike on potential for high contrast visual interest very powerful thing I actually really want to start just playing with this create a scene throw some shapes in there and and I mean I can't remember the name of this particular image but there was a purpose like the column of light represented something so there was a meaning to the column of light it's not quite as simple as just throw shapes in there but anyway the next one they said this one's pretty cool in my opinion because it's extreme simplicity right like you have the character that at this point we've seen enough characters sorry I've probably been missing some questions I'm gonna get to those and after this but I'm the simplicity of this image the only complexity is the character now did he spend the whole two hours doing the character I don't know I would guess not he probably has that library he threw him in there posed it so it looks like he's being like abducted by an alien kind of thing the geometry around it super simple not even reflections involved but then you have this rainbow light around surrounding the character and I mean you know it certainly did not take him that long and now that we've spent so much time in his artwork we can weave we're starting to break it down as to how this is achievable given a mastery of these skills but but what's cool about this is if we look up if we just type in imagine dragons like it'd be can't use that as part of their their imagery like their their album art how cool is that you know just a couple hours and a powerful image later you know you've got connections like that you've got success of that caliber and yeah this is an example of how less can be more you know maybe I wouldn't look at this image and think how detailed is that except for the character the character does have enough geometric detail that that reads registers to me as a detailed character but everything else is just very intentionally simple and yeah I think that's all for the abstract when maybe there's one more but okay yeah so the procedural generation idea like when you look at this image hopefully if you've got experience with blender you know that this can be created fairly simply with with modifiers in blender and you know with wire modifiers from an eco sphere and yeah I don't know I don't want to break it down and get too nerdy but like this kind of shape we've all probably been there where we we play around with the modifiers and see what we can get and even that you know I've never thought of it as like a something to showcase but like he was probably playing with that stuff to learning it himself and realized he could turn into a pretty beautiful image you know like I can absolutely imagine this being hung in someone's home you know like that's kind of how I see all of his images like these could be printed and hung in someone's home that it's that level of artistry and quality visual but I love how this has just a single light source seemingly like in the upper right corner very stark shadows huge gradient across the entire image just you know using the mastery of his lighting abilities it's it's all of it together creates these things alright so finally the last real category that I'm looking at with him is unique styles and so we've talked a little bit about okay before I get into that and let me only answer some questions I've kind of neglected the chat let's see here question do you think that it would be would add a nice little punch to his renders if he subdued the stuff after it apologizing versus boolean everything I may be wrong but there's a lot of sharp edges that don't reflect light yes I am so obviously when you do subdivision surface things get a lot harder things get a lot more time-consuming because you have to in a general sense you have to be more mindful about your topology but I would guess okay so let me go back let me go back for a second and show you it was the repetition I believe let's go okay this one so this maybe use the bevel modifier or maybe he modeled with subdivision surface but like these this image particularly all these models do have like edge edge illumination like reflectivity so it looks like they've been beveled at least and in this image like it registers that way it seems like maybe modeling is what he was focusing on primarily so it's not that he doesn't do it but he chooses not to and sharp edges I think given how how often he's making images he's probably decided that he likes it it's not an oversight but he likes the sharper edges we've obviously seen here that he doesn't um he can do it what am I trying to say he can do beveled edges in that appearance but I don't know I'm also a very big fan of his if you can't tell so I don't think he makes mistakes or oversights you know at this point in his in his mastery of these skills I think everything's pretty intentional that would be that's what I at least err on the side of alright so let me go back to the questions you did say like it adds a nice little punch and I would agree like I'm a modeler primarily like that's that's what I do most of the time and I like to see the bevels sharp edges can sometimes you know ruin that for me but um and so i agree it could especially in that image we just looked at it does add a nice little punch can the same techniques be applied to non abstract art yes I think so like this this is an example william of his realism he's able to achieve photo realism this this reminds me of even a little bit that the poster ready player one which this image was around a pretty certain long before that poster came out but somebody this was inspiration for the poster but this to me there's no abstract there's very little abstract if any abstract nature to this it's pure photo realism but we see his his ability to use repetition to use the power of light sources and quality shading you know the volume metrics up at the top just makes it feel like a hazy kind of back alleyway feel to this so yeah these techniques could totally be used for non abstract things and and yeah so this this last category is going to showcase like just a piece of the different styles he's able to achieve outside of abstract but so first we have realism and then next we've got this looks straight out of like 2001 a Space Odyssey back to ever you know mention that he he seems to be inspired by by a sci-fi you know aesthetic yeah absolutely so you know but but the way he treats this image the treatment and the glow of the lights and the for some reason the very or the rich saturated orange-red of these these lines you know whatever they are that's one of those abstract elements these sinews kind of running down down the Rays running down this this tube something about that feels very 70s to me and in the grain and the image as well and so he achieves that that distinguished aesthetic he also has this image which you know to me looks like an 80s album cover right like there's very little shading information it's almost like it's very graphical basically and not a lot of shading lighting any of that stuff but it looks more of an exercise in procedural generation of geometry by his use of color here is a very intentional and very artistic he's also mention that he's been trying to learn color like along the way and improve his color skills and this to me is a great example of it but it's different right like who would have thought these two artists were the same you know or the same artists between these three images so he's really pushing at his box he's breaking his conventions breaking what he maybe is comfortable with um I know I would not be comfortable if someone told me hey can you create this image I have to really think about it compared to if someone said hey can you create this image I'd be like okay I know how I'd go about it and so he's got this 80s album cover style and there's one of my favorites 90s trapper keeper graphical if you don't know what I mean by Trapper Keeper let's look that up real quick these were all the rage when I was in like elementary school well apparently they're still around as a brand but what I always think of is this kind of stuff right so like these primitive 3d renders with with bright neon colored lights and you just funny shapes this is another example of it's like they just realize how to render 3d stuff and they were there trying to do it although that might be a painting actually yeah it's probably not a 3d render but so this kind of style this aesthetic I think he achieves here and he does it several times like this is a theme that he kind of revisits a style very unique and it's not it's not something to be taken lightly like changing a style is changing a lot about how you see stuff I mean if you go if we go look at my portfolio it looks like the same artist did this you know and and I just really respect the fact that he can break those conventions get out of his comfort zone and create different things before I go on to the next next Styles let me catch back up on the questions from Nathan and your opinion does the fact that people use cinema 4d have a strong impact on the visual style of his art can we achieve similar things with cycles see 4d octane seems to have a certain look to it but that is just a service level observation of my own all right so my opinion my professional opinion is that know again what I've talked about this earlier but like the tools are not the thing to focus on at all I it's a gut reaction and I understand that that like Oh his tools must be the reason he's able to do this but it's definitely I would say it's definitely not it's his it's his understanding of the tools that enables him to do this if he was proficient with cycles he'd be able to create the same thing I guarantee that or three studio max and whatever you know you name it like there was a time when when technology was a little more varied and and I remember like using engines render engines that sucked compared to render engines that were good but they're all good now they're all good so it's not about the tools I personally have used mental ray V Maya software blender render cycles yeah for a are there any others that I I mean PBR stuff like unities engine a sketch fabs engine like we're at the point in time where all of these do very similarly you know I mean okay the PBR is not like comparable to cycles exactly but all the traditional offline renderers they can do the same thing I've used them and I've done the same thing in different engines all that to say don't focus on the tools you're missing out if you think the tools are the reason he's able to do this stuff I love the glowy stuff I agree man I I just get lost in it and I love it that's part please subjective I'm sure but oh there's some fun glowy stuff technically there tetrahedrons I'm sorry maybe you're talking about the pyramid but thank you for the clarification wow this is pg-13 yeah it's about to get close to rated R towards the end and let me see if I miss anything else okay oh yeah a lot of the images chosen for today could be on the on a Pink Floyd album cover that's pretty awesome yeah and obviously like he's got that aesthetic he does most of his renders in like a taller format not the widescreen you know cinematic format so I think he probably and given his connection with like VJ stuff like he's got a connection to music so he's got to be influenced by that stuff but yeah I mean we've seen imagine dragons use his stuff for their album covers so definitely got got a an album cover aesthetic to him a Pink Floyd is a pretty big rock band so check them out if you haven't heard of them before alright maybe I'm caught up sorry I kind of let the questions get Wow you guys were talking I love it okay cool excellent all right so back to the styles we've got we've covered 90s trapper keeper graphical next we have basically vector art right so he's he's even out of his he's kind of like criss-crossing software you know you usually do this kind of thing with was it illustrator or like Inkscape if you're on linux where it's like gradients and shapes right there's very little almost no lighting information we can tell that this big shape is a sphere that's reflecting the other shapes just because the subtle reflection that we can see in there um and on this ball too but besides that there's very little information and so you know he's getting into into the abstract graphical world by using 3d and octane like I love to see him break out of the conventions of even the software and what they're designed for and like making something completely unique it's yeah it's not something to take lightly to experiment in these different styles using the same tools and then this one to me like go we have several abstract categories at least the way I defined it this to me is like an abstract portrait it almost looks like a photograph like this was a display or a gallery piece in a museum or something and he took it he took a black-and-white photo of it but like you know it's it's centrally framed the composition is very central and it's this I you know there's a theme of square shapes all around everything's square and blocky but he's just very good at that and right up his wheelhouse with the sharp sharp shadows coming from a key light in the upper left corner and then procedurally generated geometry so in this way you know it looks to me like an abstract photo or portrait and he's also got a painterly this painterly image I mean it registers to me like a painting like an oil painting or something there's no reflectivity um but it's like the way he achieved that style to me is just fascinating but yeah this again looks like something that could be hung in a home like I think I could get my wife to buy this and hang it in our house at thinking it's a painting and not a 3d render so yeah I mean at this point I'm just trying to I'm illustrating how many different varieties of style he had he's able to achieve and I mean this is just a scratching the surface right like we've got 4,000 images that we can choose from from him so this is abstract painterly abstract realism this is one of my favorite things about him that draws me in to him where all of the the technical proficiency of realism is there right the reflections read very very realistic the glass refraction reads very realistically it looks like studio lighting so everything about the technical part of this feels real but then this this weird glass blown sphere shape is something I've never seen before and so like it transports me into this this fake world that feels real you know like he's able to do that so well and and he's just you know it's his mastery of those skills and that understanding of computer graphics and and realistic rendering that frees him up to create these abstract things to put a twist on it and or a swirl to be literal so I like this abstract realism where it's like a shape that I've never seen before or it's a it's a light beam that I've never seen before but everything else around it feels tangible and feels real and then finally abstract character you know we've seen his character work a lot in throughout the images and you know as 3d modelers we all can probably look at this and think oh yeah that's just a head model right like those are dime a dozen you can find them anywhere we can see you know the the the what you call them eyelash geometry that kind of serves as these little cards we can see those in there we can see the the mouth cavity inside you know the transparent glass but he takes something simple to me and he creates this this refractive what's the word dispersed like dispersion you know refracted dispersion and makes the Train pairen see have a rainbow color going on he's he's broken up the reflections and refractions with with a grunge texture we can see evidence of that and he's even like put some internal geometry in there aside from from the eyes and the the mouth cavity and teeth there's like some sort of ball back here it looks like he's almost duplicated the the scalp and like pushed it into the head and I mean the only reason I can think of is to make it more visually interesting to give more things more geometry for the refraction and and like that's me breaking it down but what every single one of these images has is when you take a step back and you just look at it your eyes have so much to enjoy and your mind does to like it challenges your perception and in that way it keeps me coming back and back and back obviously as it has led to success for him and this is just a couple hours you know like it's it's a couple hours every day for 10 years and he's able to do this kind of art so really really a wide variety of style I really challenge you to look through his library as much as you can you'll probably lose a couple hours to doing that if you're like me but and this is again scratching the surface like we've only in total looked at what like 30 images out of 4,000 so pretty crazy but the takeaway is and we look if I've got any more yeah so chromatic aberration that might let me see if that was part of the image there might be a little chromatic aberration there's definitely some of his renders that have it I don't know about this one that poor guy looks like he has a brain tumor yeah maybe that may be the name of the art has something to do with that but yeah okay so that yeah you get a Katherine this is good it's very it looks real but WTF what is it right like that's how I how he draws me in and it's fascinating and it's expanded my like appreciation and appetite for like things that challenge me visually so pretty sweet um here the question from Omar has people said he knows a bit of coding it seems some of his stuff could be mathematically generated yeah no I don't know that he's ever I've seen any evidence that he does like code-based you know 3d stuff engine and an art generation geometry generation but like it's it seems very likely given how expansive his toolset is is painterly a software no painter lead to me is yeah as a style someone else already said it it's just like an adjective for what looks like a painting cool all right so let's talk about the takeaways so we've seen a lot of artwork and a lot of me probably coming across as like a big fan and bias and I don't I don't I don't deny that he's one of my fees probably my top artist and has been for for a while he's been the first to really challenge my perception of art in in years so I'm big fan of his we've seen a lot of his art talked a lot about what makes it great and in my opinion but what what I want you to take away what I want you to hopefully take away is the possibilities the infinite possibilities in the abstract okay at least an appreciation for the abstract but like what it represents to me someone who's kind of grown bored with with the stuff I've like taught or created up to this point you know character after character after character cartoon creature after cartoon creature shade or after shade or after shader all this stuff you know that I just repeat and I stick inside my box but abstract cracks open this wide world of of new things new ways to use my abilities new ways to use your abilities how to improve my abilities and also had like a new route for expressing myself that's one thing that's that's been growing in me like how to say something that I want to say with my art not just recreate a lightsaber you know not just do that kind of stuff so there are infinite possibilities in the abstract I hope you kind of get some of that the fact that he is a master people is a master at these technical skills so his his abstract I don't mean to go back to the debate but where I may be mistakenly can see abstract art as as a shirking of the technical technical skill in favor of like expression or experimentation like he is a master at technical and he's a master at abstract oh but yeah the rest of that quote like or the rest of that point the math your ability to master the technical skills is what will liberate the artist I think that's what I get out of people is and I'll talk about more why in just a minute but I believe it requires him to be a master in order to convey these abstract about visual pieces not the other way around so also he's a there's no beggar there's no better example than practice makes perfect we can see he's been doing it been at it for 10 years insane and he said like he's posting this that he's doing it intentionally to to practice and to get better and by posting it on the Internet and he's being held accountable for that you know really really impressive dedication to it and finally remember that people is human so if in theory if he can do it so can you so can I more realistically like I'm not really planning on doing this for 10 years like not many people will but if I can just glean a few nuggets here and there apply it to my workflow take that challenge and and and it takes me further down the road knowing that he's human that's what can motivate me to do that kind of stuff certainly how my me my mind works is there anything else well ok yeah I did want to show you about the fact that he is human and practice makes perfect to illustrate this you can go to his website look at his every day's and he's posted all of them I believe and he's got him in archives right so you can go down to year 1 rounds are years as far as I can tell so round 1 he was just focusing on drawing round 2 he started to learn cinema4d well okay so let's just let's just spend some time in there real quick yeah let's look at some of these some of these images some of these drawings now he's very expressive so he's you know he's got he's got things to say and they could be a little pg-13 radar just be aware of that but like from a technical standpoint like if I'm honest it's not like incredibly impressive work right he looks like a younger artist learning things so that's his drawings if we go back to his first years in cinema 4d look at some of this stuff yes this should make you feel so much better like this is where we all started right like I didn't really do stuff like this he that's already a little more advanced tectonic turns is the name of this one but like look at this kind of stuff he's probably figuring out what lens flares are all about like this simple character like thank goodness this artist started out this way and he's posted it on the internet like we can see it explicitly his progression of skill that's what I'm trying to show you if you go through these you'll see round three that was another cinema 4d I think seven out of eleven are all 3d based and you know like we can continue to see his work and his progression how he gets better and better and better not only in the quality of his 3d but also like I think what he's expressing you see a maturity and an advancement of of like composition of the voice that I was talking about so anyway spend some time there if you don't believe that he is human and that you couldn't do this stuff - it's all documented right here in his archives and eventually you see him start just these just excels every single year and learns learns enough to become a just insane insanely talented artist gifted artist sorry talented there's a questionable term alright now the last thing I want to end with is when he finished his ten day his ten years in a row he he posted this this image like a like a typographic image to commemorate his ten years and I want to end with that it is a little rated-r so out of respect for social constructs and what we at this point in time have decided as appropriate language I'm going to censor it even though that could I feel like is a disservice to the actual thing to his message but I'm gonna censor it but you remember this this is there hasn't been no better challenge in my opinion than what he says here after 10 years of doing this stuff so remember it read to yourself uncensored exactly how it is but so I'm gonna read it right now forget checking Facebook again forget that picture you just saw on Instagram forget worrying about how many people liked your last post forget the news forget that person you really should email back forget your self-doubt forget whatever happened yesterday forget starting tomorrow forget will people like this forget will this be good enough forget all of your excuses sit down and do work that that should motivate the hell out of you okay and it does me and I want to leave it with that that commemorates his 10 years no better authority to say that in him no one who is documented a harder worker than people then Mike people Winckelmann Wow I almost forgot his name how embarrassing so yeah that is people that is an artist study I hope you got some things out of that and I hope you liked it so that's going to be all for today I don't see any other questions I feel one with that quote that is amazing so yeah if there's any other questions from Glenn Johnson do you have any of your own artwork inspired by people Kent hmm okay there's one image let me see if I can find it it's really bad though like I mean it's hardly an inspiration let me see let me see where it's at um right here uh it was a no no no I'm sorry it was not this course it was art of sculpting sorry I'm almost there this one so this feature image right here um all I did I think I was I just seen people's work and his use of like harsh pink lighting basically harsh saturated lighting I've always shied away from so when I I was playing with the new feature image I I took that from him you know I I was inspired by that that's it right so that's not much at all but I really do want to at some point do a stream where I try to like mimic his his workflows I tried to apply what what I feel like I've learned from analyzing his art and try to create some abstract image within like a two hour time frame so I do want to do that um we'll see when it actually happens but anyway yeah so that is gonna be the stream for today what's up next for you Kent let's see this month I'm focusing on doing like I'm doing a stream each week and next week is going to be a what is it a stream about freelancing we're gonna have a discussion with lamp Elle and and Wayne Dixon about freelancing tips and sharing about our experience freelancing and what we've learned about it we're gonna do a couple other things that I'm going to publish really soon I've got it all planned I just need to publish it officially to our calendar but yeah that's what I'm working on I'm trying to figure out what class to do next and there's a lot of good exciting ideas for that kind of stuff but I've kept you long enough about an hour and 40 minutes so I'm gonna I'm gonna sign off for today I I'm glad to hear that someone thought was amazing inspiring about people and they didn't know about it before he really is yeah he's really incredible so worthy to follow it's just form if you want to he's easy to find and you'll it's like endless inspiration so thank you guys for being here today and I will see you next week so

Channel: CG Cookie

Views: 169,690

Keywords: everyday, daily, artwork, c4d, blender, render, graphics, motion, vj, Mike Winkleman

Id: 8fJzx5qPllY

Length: 100min 19sec (6019 seconds)

Published: Wed May 09 2018