"It Came From Behind"

This started out as a body hair study, but got a little out of hand.

If you like it, please consider:

Buying a print from RedBubble
Downloading a FREE wallpaper for your phone
Feeling extra fancy? I have 10 limited edition silver halide process prints available (extra luxury)

Okay! After my last few posts, I imagine people are looking at this like...

...I hope my art gets that kind of reaction!! 😂

But, there's not much to decipher here: it's a hot dude...but why?

...why are we studying pinups?

I'm pensively starting my art nouveau study, which involves a lot of organic forms, symbolism, and pinups. Without the complexity of sacred geometry, narrative, or 16+ characters in a single scene, I felt a pinup would be a good place to practice new skills and techniques.

...like a new body hair grooming workflow and comp technique. Hair is very complex and typically crashes my computer, but I learned some new tricks for optimizing my scenes and keeping the poly counts down. I've also changed how its rendered; instead of extracting the hair as a mask of a render pass, I'm rendering the hair on clay and using the AO and reflection passes to apply the hair in post. The result is a much more believable body hair:

"Hair displacement map" is my old method. Hair done this was looks painted-on, and that works for dark body hair...but translucent body hair (like blond or redhead body hair) looked weird.

See the highlights in the red body hair in the new hair workflow? These hairs catch light and produce a more realistic result.

I'm actually really happy with the result. I feel like I'm starting to achieve a "hyper realism" with this new hair workflow and am excited to try it with a more complex scene.

New focal length: 35mm

Since we were doing a pinup, I thought I might try to emphasize the, uh, focus. Where I typically work at really long focal lengths (135mm, 300mm, and isometric), I stepped down to a 35mm focal length to emphasize the subject's...😳...legs.

The GIF above shows the dramatic distortion we get at this focal length. This also changes the relationship between the subject and environment...300mm would have been too intimate.

Pulp Horror, but make it pinup?

We'll see if this upsets Instagram. Instead of blurring, I'm going to try censoring with some graphic elements. This fits a little better with the advertising-motivated layouts of art nouveau, and let's me practice my graphic design.

Actually, I think this could make a fun series.

It Came From Behind
The Swamp Thong
Lurking in Your DMs

...thats all I could come up with. How about you? Can you think of any pulp horror titles that might work?

Was it good for you too?

I had fun, and if you enjoyed this you might consider:

The Crossing at 7th and Stonewall

The Indulgence of Camp

Outtake: highland bull

Hustlin' Hog's Rear View

Before the Weight Room

See all posts from Restaurant Weak