This is a test render of one of the protagonists for my new animation piece that I’m currently working on for the Hidden Place. Stay tuned for more progress updates!

Zbrush render

This piece was influenced by Jökulsárlón Lagoon, a beautiful and serene place in the Southern Iceland where a glacial tongue comes down into the lake and calves off icebergs.

Jökulsárlón Lagoon, Iceland 2006 view 01

Jökulsárlón Lagoon, Iceland 2006 view 02

Jökulsárlón Lagoon, Iceland 2006 final background plate

The 3D sculpt, as always, was done in Zbrush from only a few scarce references I could find online.

whale fetus ZBrush sculpt

Here’s an unfinished composite done in Photoshop with an alternative angle of view of the sculpt.

alt composite view

The final composite work-in-progress. Individual icebergs were cut out from the background view 01 (see on the very top) and transformed to better match perspective of the shot.

comp view wip

final composite ready to be taken into AE

A total of 15 individual icebergs were animated inside After Effects as well as smoke elements were added to enhance the ambiance.
click to enlarge:

AE set-up

view the final animation here

Here’s a quick rundown of how I put this piece together. This is different from others in a way that not a single photographic element was used. Even the landscape was completely computer-generated.

This work derives inspiration from a Greenlandic folktale which tells the story of two women escaping the thrashing of their husband and finding shelter inside a beached whale amid the frozen landscape.

click to enlarge:

making of Untitled (bowhead skull), Hidden Place, 2009

see the final animation here

One of my new animation pieces Untitled (bowhead skull) is going to be displayed in a group show in NY Studio Gallery this September along with two photographs from the Tales from Vienna Woods project. To present my animation I found an antique postcard projector from the early 1900s, gutted it out and outfitted it with an LCD monitor and a hard drive. The result is a self-contained and unique (as in edition of one) video installation piece which will run the animation on a continuous loop. See the photos below to get an idea of what it looks like. This week I will be posting the animation itself followed by the ‘making of section,’ so stay put!

The show will run from Sept 3—Oct 3 with an opening on Sept 9th, 7—9pm (please save the date!) More details to follow.

I would also like to express gratitude to my dad whose engineering degree and incredible handiness have helped me put this tin box apart and back together again.

update: see the final animation here

Putting the final piece together in After Effects (click to enlarge):

animating clouds, flying particles, and eye blink in AE

Click here to see the eye animation test.

P.S. Final piece will be posted at the end of the week; stay tuned!

Blue Mountain (Blafell) is located in southwest Iceland and is believed to be the home of trolls who come down every so often to torment the humans. Even though this piece has nothing to do with the latter I wanted to incorporate some of the mythical aura that the mountain possesses. I took the below photograph in September, 2006 and thought it would be the perfect background for my ‘whale’ creature.

Blue Mountain (Blafell), Iceland

These are various stages of the composite process:

composite concepts

Stay tuned for the final piece very soon!

Here’s a whale eye render composite in Photoshop. Various render passes were combined together to achieve the desired color, texture, and lighting. Click here to see these different elements.
Onto to the background matte painting!

Stay tuned for more updates.

(click to enlarge image)

final render composite in Photoshop

Here’s a screenshot of a whale’s sculpt (eye and mouth area mostly) for a new piece from the Hidden Place project with a working title “Blue Mountain.”  Stay tuned for the progress of this work (click thumbnail to view a larger version).

whale 3D sculpt (eye detail)

P.S. This whale is a million years old.

This piece was inspired by a Greenlandic folk-tale Kakuarshuk which tells the story of women having to dig deep in the frozen earth to find their offsprings. They would claw their way with bare hands through the ground to find girls closer to the surface, but boys were buried much deeper and would take a lot more work to get to. Thus, strong women had many children and lazy ones had few or no children at all.

making of Untitled (fetus), Hidden Place 2009

view the finished animation here