Nessie Prefers No Fishing

Hello Blenderartists!

I have found a lot of external motivation by entering the Blender Guru competitions over the past year. The current “What Really Happened” competition is my third, and in my opinion, one of the more fun topics. My entry is below, and then a little bit of technical detail for those who are interested:


“Nessie Prefers No Fishing” - The real story of the Loch Ness monster.

I tend to get carried away in the micro detailing of models and textures, so I told myself this one would be a simple composition and use textures for the bulk of the effect. I think I somewhat succeeded in that goal. Most of the modelling work went very quickly, as I stuck to simple shapes to build Nessie. I garnished him (or her) with details like the net (cloth simulated), seaweed, and falling water (texture not fluid sim) to mask the simple base geometry.

The water is an absorption volume with some node work to create variation in color. The surface of the water is a plane with a glassy material. I used a white emission plane behind the water to give it the glow. The streaks of light through the water are a hair particle system with a translucent material.

I painted the background in Photoshop using my new(ish) Wacom tablet. I’m having a lot of fun with the tablet, by the way. I experimented with geometry backgrounds, but I could not achieve the non-intrusive style that I could get with a simple image plane.

As always, thanks for looking!

-Scott

Really awesome!!! great idea

Brilliant!

Great composition, lighting, modelling and texturing. Doesn’t hurt that it tells a very interesting, creative and funny story. :smiley:

Congrats!

Very cool. The water is perfect.

Fantastic idea.
And fantastic production.
All what makes a great illustration

Very nice image and thanks for explaining how you created it.

Really nice! :slight_smile:
My oppinion: Spend more time on the character - and background… overal and as cocnept looks super nice!

Awesome!! My money is on this for the winner. =)

Cool! great concept and execution, and very clever use of textures! 5 stars!

Great work and congrats !

I love this, it’s so dynamic! Great job :slight_smile:

congrats, for this work, interesting materials execution, the water, nessie and fish are very killer!

I love your texturing and composition! Not every image needs incredibly complex modeling to be compelling. The only thing I might change is to make the fisherman’s face a little more pronounced, as at the moment it’s hard to see unless you zoom in very close. Cheers!

That’s really creative! I love this. Well-deserved win on BlenderGuru.
Do you have a website Scott? Where can I follow more of your work?

Very nice work, and beautifully presented. :slight_smile:

I remember your Christmas one. Your other stuff is really good too. Lots of attention to composition and storytelling. I like your style. You’re on to something good. I’ll have to keep an eye out for your future work. Let me know if you decide to setup that website.

Super cool! Great composition/modelling/materials/render!

I always loved this thing! Glad to see it up top! *****
Great modeling and materials but also a wonderful funny subject.

Absolutely excellent!!! Keep up the great work! :yes:

Mixture of cartoon, and real world!
I Like it :wink: