["Yo Ho Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life for ME!"]
OK. Why Jack Sparrow you ask? Simple. I am OBSESSED with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise! From the music to the characters to the visual effects and more, I am a HUGE fan and so I decided to make this scene based on a pirate theme.
If you observe closely, there is one object from each of the movies that has been added to this scene:
- the cursed Aztec Gold medallions [seen in "Curse of the Black Pearl"]
- Jack's one-and-only compass [well, he uses this in all of the movies]
- and Sao Feng's Pirate Chart [seen in both "At World's End" and "On Stranger Tides"]
- [BONUS] the background includes a map of MiddleEarth from my first favourite movie: The Lord of the Rings! [I wanted to incorporate a subtle mixture of things to keep things interesting]
One thing common with all of my artwork, I keep telling myself "it's never good enough, it can still be better..." which results in the excessive amount of time I spend doing these assignments! However, the end result is so pleasing and rewarding, and it's good to know that at one point I take a step back and say: "Yes. This is it. I'm satisfied with this!"
[So...I spent almost 2 weeks on this one; had a lot of fun with the textures [believe it or not, NO UV MAPPING WAS DONE FOR THIS SCENE...the textures are all projections of images edited in Photoshop]. I knew that the scene was going to be dull and contain a mix of red and brown hues, so I added the rusted copper vase and the compass, both hues of green, to give a little more flavour to the scene. However, the main challenge of this assignment was the candlelight. Getting the texture is one thing, getting the light is another, but getting ALL THE SHADOWS in their CORRECT PLACES was quite difficult. Since there are 5 candles in the scene, each will be casting its own shadows over the objects, so from each object, there should be AT LEAST 4 shadows visible, including the candles themselves. To achieve this, I created a point light above each candle and allowed them to cast shadows on everything other than their respective candle. Also, there is another point light in the centre of the flame of each candle, and a transparency map and ramp texture was given to the flame to add more realism. The candlestick was made translucent with a slight glow only on the top, and the wick was made using a ramp texture.]
All in all, I'm very satisfied with this and I'm glad it turned out so well!
I added one picture with a little depth of field so you can see the textures of the coin and rusty plate in detail.
Please let me know what you think! Again, I'm open to any helpful feedback and comments :)
Enjoy! :D
My Favourite Quote from the first movie:
[Barbossa: "How the blazes did you get off that island?!"
Jack: "When you marooned me on that island you forgot one very important thing mate...I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?"]
