"The Big Room Energy"

I hope this is recognizable for people who go to those big gay parties.

You know the kind...thousands of half naked gay men crowding the dancefloor. Looks like this:

It looks spectacular. I can't help but peer into the crowd, wondering what everyone is doing. Each person is having their own moment, their own story, and I voyeuristically want to witness it.

That was the inspiration for this piece. I'm trying to capture just a small section of this crowded dance floor.

Composition Check

Dynamic, busy, crowded scenes like this can get chaotic. I've used dynamic symmetry (left) to bring balance to the composition, and the Fibonacci spiral to lead your eye through the image.

As always, I've placed important details on/around the intersections of this secret geometry.

Each person is having a little moment. Some of these characters are recycled models from past renders...it's like they have a very busy social life!

Atmospheric Fog

I've been studying a lot of Japanese art to better appreciate the techniques and styles that influenced the art nouveau movement. One of the new techniques is this idea of atmospheric perspective: you see objects that are far away less clearly, and their color changes in value, saturation, and hue.

By taking the z-depth pass of my render, I can add atmospheric effects later in post. For this scene, I added smoke to mimic smoke machines at dance clubs.

Isometric Perspective

Real quick:

Linear perspective creates the illusion of three-dimensional space by drawing objects so that they appear to recede into the distance. This was a very big thing for the Renaissance.

Isometric perspective creates the illusion of three-dimensional space without receding objects into the distance...instead, all dimensions are drawn with equal foreshortening. This was a very big thing for Asian art pre-1850.

The Isometric perspective is a very sophisticated and unique was to represent 3D space. Because the view of objects isn't distorted by their distance, isometric is great for showing very dense scenes. In the example above, all the people in the scene are at different depths, but they are all the same size, so we can still appreciate all the details and expressions without them shrinking away to the horizon.

I've tried using it in my last pic to show a very busy day at the park, and I'm using it again to get all the details in-line for this crowded dance party.

I had some difficulty picking up the ukiyo-e style, but these other artistic devices are a lot of fun. I'm excited to keep exploring.

Prints and more

Did you like this pic? Help support my work by telling your friends about it. If you really like it, I have it for sale as a print:

The Crossing at 7th and Stonewall

The Indulgence of Camp

Outtake: highland bull

Hustlin' Hog's Rear View

It Came From Behind

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