David after Goliath

After the earth has turned to desert David returns to the massive corporate cathedral. Just as the air, what once was his has turned to dust, he finds his statue has crumbled. He touches a physical reminder of the ruin his own greed brought upon the world.

A render and set of studies made for the course Beyond 3D. The point of the course was mostly to learn how to model and render cinematic scenes in Autodesk Maya. To that end I decided I was interested in creating a scene inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s ‘The Weather Project’ and Blade Runner 2049. In both there is a heavy emphasis on the monochromatic aspects and dusty / diffuse particle rich air. Which seemed like an interesting challenge.

Modelling the person and simulating how cloth falls around them ended up being one of the most complex aspects of the project even though they only take up a tiny amount of the final image. The entire scene is quite simulation heavy as that was most interesting to me. Mainly the oily / sludgy liquid in the basin and the interaction between dust in the air and diffusion of the sun ended up becoming quite complex. Below there are some studies and images related to the process of making this single image and its simulated parts.