Here is a work I am just beginning to put together. It is not anywhere finished I am stuck on materials and render settings. I am just beginning to learn how to UV texture and work in Gimp so I am confident I will work this out soon.
What I am looking for is
Composition?
Materials?
Render settings?
I am fairly a noob so be gentle. Here is the currant render and the original sketch.
Dali on Blender, cool.
OK, first off, I don’t think I’m crazy for saying this: the appendage on the upper left really looks like sombody mooning, especially in the sketch. I’m guessing that isn’t the intent.
So here’s a few rapid-fire impressions:
The sketch is cool - but it’s an object, no background. The model’s background looks somewhat ad hoc. Somthing needs to unite them or link them conceptually or organically.
The watch isn’t reacting to the appendages. I think it needs to bend, puncture, somehow warp in response to these things coming into and out of it.
The winding device seems small in relation to the body of the watch.
The heads are easy to see in the sketch, more difficult to discern in the model; texture will help that, I think.
The lighting needs more starkness, contrast, and some bloom would be nice. Maybe DOF?
One thing that Dali always did was to have “action/reaction” themes in his paintings; it makes you feel the gravity so that when he broke the rules, it was all the more visually interesting. (Elephants on stilts - gotta love that.)
Kinda vague critiques, so far, but that’s a gut reaction. Keep it up, I like the style!
same as above objects should blend more together but looks cool nevertheless
I was just looking at this thread :http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=121552 and I think that would look great with your hands there.
By the way, I like it alot, but what the hell is that thing in the top left? It looks like a bum with a thumb coming out of it.
Keep blending!
No intent just ended up that way. When I sketch everything just happens no planning just pure sketching. This all just came out of a few circles I had drawn.
So here’s a few rapid-fire impressions:
The sketch is cool - but it’s an object, no background. The model’s background looks somewhat ad hoc. Somthing needs to unite them or link them conceptually or organically.
Yep I agree. This is something I am struggling with. This was intended to be an Oil painting but I can no longer paint. So I am trying to complete this in Blender instead. When I paint it is so much easier to get things to flow together. CG has been hard for me to adapt to. I was going for sands of time sort of thing. I had thought of modeling the top part of an hour glass as seen from inside.
The watch isn’t reacting to the appendages. I think it needs to bend, puncture, somehow warp in response to these things coming into and out of it.
I hadn’t even thought of this. I was trying to stay true to the original sketch but I think you have a good Idea. I will have to play around with it and see how it looks.
The winding device seems small in relation to the body of the watch.
This will be an easy fix. I will scale it up a bit.
The heads are easy to see in the sketch, more difficult to discern in the model; texture will help that, I think.
This is one of the things I was stuck on. Should I fully texture the heads or leave them as is. I hate to even think of adding hair. The particle system and I are not happy with each other. Here is what the head looks like with textures I though it would be distracting.
The lighting needs more starkness, contrast, and some bloom would be nice. Maybe DOF
I tried that and it seemed to harsh. I showed it to some people and was told to soften the shadows. I liked it harsh so I will set it back that way. Not super sure how to do DOF yet. I know it’s a setting in the camera but I am not totally sure how to set it up yet. I set the object as the clock right now.
One thing that Dali always did was to have “action/reaction” themes in his paintings; it makes you feel the gravity so that when he broke the rules, it was all the more visually interesting. (Elephants on stilts - gotta love that.)
I wasn’t thinking of Dali when I made this. But I agree that it needs something. I don’t want to do a copy of someone else’s style so I am being careful to do things that I would do.
Thanks for the advice it will take some time to fix some of this stuff.
I have a modified form of that shader on already but thanks for the heads up.
Hmmm…about the head texture…I look at the sketch, and it looks like the hands have picked up the heads from a ruined temple or something - in other words, statues. This might be a good direction for a few reasons:
Come to think of it, here’s another direction: there’s that famous Escher piece that turns the volume of the head into an unwinding sheet of flat material. (Attached) That might be particularly effective for the medium (CG) since we do exactly that with UV maps. See also the Maya 7.0 spash-screen art, which turns the head into wires. (Not attached - I’m lazy.) At any rate, don’t bother with particle hair, it ain’t worth it for this piece.
The idea of modeling an hourglass from the inside is cool…but wow, that’s hard to pull off. Also: you’ve already got your time metaphor in place (the watch), maybe what you need is an idea that unites the idea of the moving “hands” and the time piece - though you risk a pun with that. (Hour and minute hands on the watch, get it?:p)
As for the top left appendage: I say, get rid of the 4th one altogether. A grouping of three can be stronger compositionally, IMO, and is less busy. There’s quite enough going on already.
DOF: you know, after I posted that comment, I started to think about what DOF is…its a false way to mimic what a real-world camera does. Probably not what you want here. I think what I really meant to suggest was LOD - level of detail, and the way objects in the distance begin to fade and lose color. Check out the BWC winner in the banner above for that concept! (Man, that dude sure raised the bar around here, eh?) Smarter folks than me can figure out how he did that, but my guess is, you could simply blur your UV maps a tad as they recede while maintaining the same resolution in the image file.
BTW (disclaimer): These critiques are my own impressions - take 'em or leave 'em, I’m not going to get all peevish if you say “no thanks.” Take whatever direction you want to take with your own piece! Blend on!
I thought that making the arms liquid maybe a interesting alternative. I think I may call this one finished what do you think?
Composition could still use a little work. It isn’t really my forte, but I think a little more perspective in the arms would look cool. This could be accomplished by increasing the view angle of the camera and zooming it in a little. The lighting is also very flat, and it would be nice too see some red/orangey highlights to complement the dusky clouds in the background. Just my thoughts on the matter…
nice project for sure.
yeah i agree with ben on the perspective thing. Strangely your sketch seems more 3d than it does in 3d:confused:. In the sketch the nearest hand is about the same size as the watch, but much smaller in the 3d.
Looks like “hands on my time” or maybe “get your hands of my time!” 
blend on
