3D Artist Competition Winner: “Flying Princess”
We treated ourselves to the luxury of participating in a 3D design competition, and it paid off.
So here is the Story. We took part in a 3D artist competition and saved neither time nor money to become the best. The main price? A RTX 4080, a big deal in 2023. One of the best graphic cards available on the customer market. It’s one of those pieces of hardware that makes a major difference in productivity when rendering large projects. So we’d have good use for one of those.
Use of Pixel Lab assets and competition requirements
The competition was initiated by The Pixel Lab, one of the best places to find high-quality VFX materials and 3d models. And the quest was simple. You can use up to 5 different resources provided by the Lab and create a fantastic 3D artwork.
Concept & Creative Direction
Thinking outside of the box and creating 3D art concept with my daughter.
So I thought, why not doing something special, something personal. And I came up with the idea of photographing my 3-year-old daughter, dressing her in a princess dress, giving her a magic wand and making her float magically in the room. The cloth simulation model worked perfectly and was visualized as a kind of magical vortex, that spiraled around my daughter.
As if they were made for it, the smoke trails became part of the toy rocket’s exhaust system. And at last I had to come up with something unique for the VFX nebula models. If these fog effects just float around in the room, it would make the overall appearance of the art work somewhat indistinct. That’s why I came up with the idea of glowing magic balls that contain nebula effects inside them. These spheres blended seamlessly with the overall atmosphere of the 2d/3d artwork ‘Flying Princess’
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Production process
A 3-year-old overcomes awkwardness and shines in the photo studio.
Once these prerequisites have been met I set up a photo shoot with my 3-year-old daughter. She gave a fabulous performance as a princess and once she overcame her initial awkwardness at being photographed with bright flashes of light bursting onto her, she acted naturally and was the perfect model.
Photography, Blender 3D and compositing workflows
After the shoot and editing raw-files was done I created the 3D environment in Blender and put the image of her into virtual space for a 3D Rendering. Encircled by an artificial children’s room that appears to be floating in the air while things fly around, she became the star of the scene. I added all the needed elements to the scene in CG and finished the artwork with creative retouching in Photohop.
Final retouching in post-production and submitting for the competition
After everything was set I submitted the Flying Princess for the competition. But was that enough to win a RTX 4080? Well you’ll see, if you pay close attention at the end of the video 😉
Rüdiger Lauktien
Married to his wonderful wife, father of two. Drummer, dreamer, pipe-smoker, photographer, adventurer and a man of faith. More than 15 years of experience in the creative industry. Awarded Digital Artist and Art Director.
