https://makersplace.com/midlet/fuse-1-of-1-65955/
Fuse is the second piece in my new Synthesis series. Something like a cousin to the Dreamers series, Synthesis is something I was really excited about when I came up with it.
You might not know it looking at most of the recent artwork I've done over something like the last year, but I'm a 2D artist by trade. I went to school for Illustration and Fine Art where I did lots of good ol fashioned painting with paint and drawing with charcoal. Later in the degree I switched more to digital painting and drawing but that's where my roots lie.
After university I worked primarily as a concept artist and illustrator for start up game companies then later started to transition into more freelance work. Motion Graphics has always been a secondary passion of mine and as I got more and more freelance work, there tended to be more demand for that sort of work vs drawings and paintings(and the pay was better) so I started to lean more into that and strengthen my chops in that area. As my career moved more into freelance I also started teaching part time at my alma mater. There I was teaching both 2D and 3D art and that job sort of also forced me to stay current and on top of all the latest tools w 3D and the industry. All these things sort of worked together to push me more into 3D not to mention the fact that I really enjoy it and over the years started to enjoy it more and more, especially once I discovered Cinema 4D and Octane Render. The creative combo that these tools make are mind boggling to me to this day and nothing feels more like Christmas to me than when Octane or Cinema have new updates.
Anyway, once I started getting into NFTs and producing art for art sake, in terms of these two facets of my skillset, I was typically choosing one or the other. Making a 2D painting, or making something completely 3D. Synthesis is about bringing these two things together into something cohesive and beautiful where the two complement each other.
In the Dreamers series I stumbled upon an interesting combination of techniques in 3D revolving around what's called volume displacement. It's essentially like manipulating a 3D cloud in space and also controlling things like its density, color, and how light scatters when it hits it. I took what I learned there and used a similar technique here in Synthesis but using my own 2D paintings as the driver of the color information in the volumes.
The end result is something I'm really happy with although I think you need to see things at their full resolution(these close ups) to really appreciate all that's going on.
When I think about what I love about painting and 2D art in general, it's having 100% control over the design and being totally free to design and create anything I can imagine. When I think about the benefits of 3D, for me it's the ability to create a level of detail quickly that I could never accomplish by hand and the ability to focus JUST on concept without having to worry about how to make things look real or read(the computer handles most of that for you). With this series I felt like I was able to take advantage of the best of both worlds and that's something I'd been wanting to do for a long time.
So this is the second piece. The first I donated as a reward to Artvatars HODL'ers. I'll be posting that one soon as well as more pieces in the series. Be on the lookout for those. Hope you like, piece is still on sale at Makersplace here