Wanderer

Lighting

A man, lost in his own thoughts is seen sitting at a bar. In a way, he is zoned out from the surrounding world, wandering his own endless thoughts in the mind.

I was inspired to make an artwork related to astronauts. However, I did not want to approach it in the widely used science fiction direction. I worked towards adding a layered meaning to the image rather than just eye candy. After multiple ideas and thoughts, I decided to take this particular concept of a person in a bar. Since it was a bar, the challenge arose to not only model but design a bar from scratch. I used many real life reference images for inspiration and found some of the common traits which all high-end bars would have. I also added a lot of my own touches as I tried to make it lavish and slightly dark with a monochromatic color scheme, which in my opinion elevates the narrative. Most important aspects of the bar in my opinion was the showcase of bottles with the lighting and the overhanging bulbs. The added crowd models also add a sense of isolation to the image.

The astronaut, being the subject in focus had to look the most appropriate. After searching for a long time, I did manage to find a very perfect astronaut model. It looked like an astronaut without looking too realistic and huge, also without many over the top science fiction elements.

A difficulty faced during this stage was in skinning. Due to the very high poly nature of the model, it was almost impossible to skin it on my laptop. Therefore, for the first time I decided to use the Maya Quick Rig tool to rig it, which surprisingly did a good job after making some changes to the joint placements.

Process Screenshots