Brain in a Box

For awhile I have been learning a 3-D animation package called 'Blender' it is a piece of software developed by a now defunct animation studio and now made available to the community for free. The package is quite powerful, allowing the user to model shapes, colours, textures, lights and cameras, not to mention make movies and computer games if you wanted. In this example I modeled a landscape and a box with some random shapes attached to tentacles popping out of the box. I was illustrating the concept that stem cell, a type of cell in your bone marrow, could become different types of other cells...many different things can come from one.

With any medium the basic principles of art still need to apply, to create this 3-D model I used the things I have learned painting landscapes...the sliver of lake, the low clouds, the trees in the distance all come together in one tight composition. I also tried to keep the colours under control, it is easy to make fake, shiny looking colours. Having said that I also wanted the work to look computerized... it kind of added to the feeling of the painting, it is usually good if the viewer senses that it is made by someone, in that way they get to participate in the process that the artist went through.


Brain in a Box, Blender Render, 2009