There is a good contest on CGTalk: http://events.cgsociety.org/NVArt/05/
Goal: making a vehicle and a good image in Syd Mead style.
Syd Mead is one of the best big old scifi artist. I love his style and this contest is a good learning to me.
You can see my entries on the CGTalk forum (it is prohibited to put entries on other forums):
I am going to toss-out my absolute first-impression … my “I have seen this for the first time in my entire life and for all of about six seconds” impression … and hope that it is useful.
I see: blue.
I see a great big patch of blue pixels on the rear of this vehicle, and … quite unexpectedly, I might add … “the 3D illusion is lost.” My eyes plunge right into this pool of blueness and disappear. I try to reconcile what I am seeing with all of the apparent 3D-ness of the image, but, in the absence of outstanding visual cues in what is a tremendously colorful but somewhat unfocused image, I find myself quite frankly scrambling for the edges of the pool.
Having experienced this, I’m not entirely sure what to suggest to fix it. The first thing that comes to mind is, “some kind of surface-defining texture.” It doesn’t have to have any sort of specular or normal component: it just needs to break up that “suddenly and disconcertingly two-dimensional” expanse of blue.
I really don’t know quite how to explain it; all I can do is describe it. The fact that the blue is deeper in that space right around the rear tire … maybe the fact that the bright specular line is broken at the right rear tire (and that the visual distinction between the tire and the “deep blue sea” is indistinct) … it’s … it’s an illusion-killer for me.
And … the various intensely-competing light values all around the car … they just keep chasing my eyes away from what’s supposed to be the subject; away from the car, and onto various visual things that compete (in the “suddenly very two-dimensional” image) more or less equally for my attention.
Yeah, it’s weird. Yeah, it’s not what you expected. Yeah, it catches me off-guard. Yeah. I just hope it makes sense.
@redbyte endi might not be a native English speaker so take that into account. I speak fluent English and to be honest I was a bit at sea reading that post.
+1 Tyrant Monkey, English is hard enough for some without colorful poetry, though sundials critique is right on.
Blue wants to be in the back, it sinks in. This is why it is used for backgrounds so often. Red pops out. My suggestion to fix this would be highlights/reflections, though I don’t know if that is ok for the style.
The first one is my favorite too. Nice works Endi.
First one the best one, absolutely, altough not SM style (but why not to take the model of the 3rd one and modify it to make an image like the first one?)
Great work endi!!!
Its just this usual problem with the rocks around. Its so difficult to achieve the randomness of these…
The other way is to spend some 10 millions of faces for a terrain. lol
Dude that looks sweet. That looks awesome. Only one but :
I think u wanted to make some mars landscape but it falttens composition. To pop this vehicle form background You shoudl tweak a bit bakcground - make it complementary -blu, lighten + desaturat =
So it instantly goes more 3d.
