My entry for The Rookie Awards

Hi, I'm Santiago Díaz Marfil (a.k.a. Oppalanc3d) a generalist 3D artist who just started a year ago in this industry.  I started to study Architecture in Universidad de Málaga where I learned about designing, space, illumination and composition. After a couple of years I jump in learning infoarchitecture images, creating 3D projects, modeling enviroments, furniture growing my interest for 3D  designing, modeling, etc. After the lockdown I found Animum Creativity Advanced School where I studied a master in production of vfx and animation which I learn all the workflow  and tools (software) to create an vfx project (modeling, a bit of animation, shading, rendering, composition). 

This entry is a recopilation of some projects I have done last year, I hope you like it.

The reason I decided to start with this ship is because I am a huge fan of Star Wars (and science fiction in general). Recently I saw the last season of the Mandalorian were I put my eye on his ship the ‘’Starfighter N-1’’ an old Naboo ship that the protagonist (in another serie ‘’the book of boba fett’’ restore and make an stylish version for himself, cromed and putting it more weapons

On the other hand I started this project to put all my knowledge of modeling hard surface, it is the most challenging project I made. The reason I thought this ship is challenging is because the mixing of its ‘’organic’’ shape, were a vertex can make it look like an imperfection; and the detailing of the engines’ pieces. Maybe it is not perfect but i appreciate it a lot due to the effort I made the last month on it.

One of the intricate moments was the engine modeling, a lot of little pieces that had to fit with the other while I had to put a lot of imagination in how can it be the engines due to the ‘’not so good’’ captures of the serie where the ship can be seen.

Seeing some references on internet of how engines are made me had an idea of how start this part with all detail I can put on it.

Another of the challenges I took in this project was to put little details on larger pieces, like wings, were we can see the edges of metal that were used to build the ship. As an extra detail a put the R5’s head as the last update on the serie.

Here you can see the UV's of the project by materials used.

Here you can see the composition in Nuke

I took some clips of Star Wars from The mandalorian and the Book of Boba Fett to create this project

I made the next project using a concept art from Asen Liy ‘’song of time 8’’. the reason y choose this concept art is because the dramatic scene, the hollow that remains me some games as ‘’Sekiro’’ and a bit an anime called ‘’Spirited away’’. 

I made an alternative illumination, making it more ‘’anime’’ with saturated illumination, lamps and a ‘’faceless’’ monster walking around. 

In this project I made all the pipeline (modeling, texturing, illumination, rendering and composition) with a couple of presets from Quicsel megascans but I ended up designing my own vegetation and presets in the scene.

The first challenge I deal was the perspective, I tried to emulate as much as I could the volumes and perspective from the original concept. Modeling vegetation, the tree and leaves making an subsurface material to make it more ‘’realistic’’ was a challenge too, because the scene started to be more and more heavy and I had to create a lot of standings so the scene can be functioning without crashing.

This was a very funny project thay I enjoyed a lot making it and learning more about maya assets and creating environments. 

Next project was an exercise on Animum Creativity Advanced School which I had an animated character provided by the school and had to make the ‘’look dev’’ (Clothes, hair, environment, lighting, rendering and composition)

I wanted to make the scene look alike a tv serie (Hannibal from NBC) so I had to make a lighting greener than usual and very hard from the top so the Character has a shadow in the face very triangular that makes him look more like a villain

One of the things i most enjoyed in this scene was modeling the kitchen and all the assets, the furniture, every detail is telling part of the story,

Ending with the audio of ‘’The office USA’’ with the voice of Michael scott (steve Carell) giving to the scene a bit of humor that fits perfectly in the gore scene.

How can I end this entry without a project about Star Wars. This droid is my version of BD-1 of the videogame Jedi fallen order, Disney made him the ‘’pet’’ of this videogames, making it as cute as they could and being imprescindible for the main character. One of the challenges I took on in this project was making a cute design maintaining its robotic structure. One of the solutions I found was making its edges softer than usual, avoiding sharpness that could make it look more ‘’villain’’ or ‘’artificial’’.

On the other hand i took some properties of ‘’organic’’ characters to make it look more ‘’alive’’ as the illumination in the lens, the eye of the robot, or a simple animation in the back panel, wich make you think is ‘’functioning’’, ‘’thinking’’.

With that I want to unwrap this entry saying I love the FX industry, the animation, creating props, environments and stuff to create imaginary worlds where we can find an escape from this conflicting world. I hope you enjoy this entry and my projects, I only started in this industry a year ago and I have to keep improving myself. 

Contact: 

-Gmail: [email protected]

-Instagram: @Oppalanc3d