Footlamp
Digital photography with an integrated 3D object, April 2018.
The footlamp is a mix of a lamp and a human foot. The background is a real photograph that was shot with a DSLR camera and edited in Adobe Photoshop for the nostalgic, brownish look and feel. The footlamp was created in Autodesk Maya and placed in the scene using Adobe Photoshop.
Final composition: A footlamp in its usual surroundings
Making of the Footlamp
Step 1: Brainstorming & Generating Ideas
This artwork was created as a part of the course "3D production" in the CMGT studies at Saxion University of Applied Sciences. The task was to create a 3D object in Maya out of two objects that don't fit together. I quickly knew that I wanted to create an object that consisted of a human body part mixed with another object. In order to come up with concrete ideas, I created a mood board and several sketches.
Step 2: Choosing a Concept & Creating a Scene
Out of all my ideas, the footlamp was my favourite one. I created a first drawing of the scene I imagined my lamp to be in. I imagined the lamp standing by the road in front of my house, maybe together with some other old furniture, as if someone who wanted to get rid of their old furniture had dumped it there.
Concept art: footlamp by the road
Step 3: Creation of the Lamp
I did some visual research on how to create a human foot, using this great tutorial by Alex Cheparev. The second part was the lamp shade which I created from my imagination. The skin on the foot was painted using Allegorithmic's Substance Painter.
Step 4: Creation of the Background
I soon had to realise that my initial idea with the lamp on the road did not work because the lamp needed to be more in the focus of the image. Therefore, I decided to place it on the table of a living room. I created an HDRI image of the living room to light the footlamp in Maya with the Arnold skydome light, and I also shot the background image - the living room - as an HDR. In order to determine the optimal angle of the lamp, I placed the background image on a plane behind the 3D object in Maya and adjusted the lamp.
Step 5: Merging the Lamp and its Background
The final step consisted of rendering the lamp in Maya with an Alpha background and placing it in the background image, which I did in Adobe Photoshop.
