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How to photograph 3D artwork

Main considerations for taking effective photos of your work:

  • Make sure your object is in focus.  Do this by resting the camera on a solid surface and shooting with adequate light.
  • Use soft directional lighting.  Avoid strong lighting that will create hot spots on the object or harsh distracting shadows on the ground plane.
  • Zoom or crop in so your object nearly fills the picture frame.
  • Use a simple background. Setup your object in front of a plain wall or sheet of cardboard to eliminate distracting elements.
  • Include multiple views. Doing so will enable the viewer to understand how the object exists in space.
  • Position your camera just above the sculpture’s midpoint. Many beginners position the camera too high, which will make the sculpture look unimportant. Photographing from the midpoint will give the sculpture an air of importance. The lower angle also makes it easier to see the sculpture’s details.

Examples of effective photos — student projects from Sculpture 1:

http://sculpture1.blogs.bucknell.edu/?p=5969

http://sculpture1.blogs.bucknell.edu/?p=6397

http://sculpture1.blogs.bucknell.edu/?p=6618

http://sculpture1.blogs.bucknell.edu/?p=6335

To learn more about photographing artwork, see the resources below:

See also: http://cota.kennesaw.edu/ArtAndDesign/portfolio-photography-tips.php

Untitled

The day my sister was born: May 25th, 2004.

My parents were in the hospital so both sets of my grandparents stayed at my house with me until we got the call that my sister was born. My grandparents asked me what I wanted for lunch and I answered with Spinach pie from Georges. So my four grandparents and I sat outside at the picnic table in my yard in the sunny 65 degree weather and ate our lunch on my parents china looking over the Chesapeake Bay. I remember the daffodils were blooming and it was the perfect spring day. I remember my sister was born shortly after we ate lunch and we went to the hospital. I was the only one that thought she would be a girl. I remember my mom holding a new baby and it was weird. The nurse gave me a cherry tootsie pop. That day felt like love.

Keywords:

  • family
  • love
  • birth
  • spring
  • growth
  • home
  • sweet
  • change
  • baby
  • bloom

Sculpt a grotesque in Zbrush

“Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks. In art, performance, and literature, however, grotesque may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes in an audience a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as sympathetic pity.” (from Wikipedia)

Google image search of “grotesques”.

Step 1) Draw a few sketches of grotesque faces.

Step 2) Watch Prof Meiser’s youtube introductory video on how to sculpt in Zbrush, and the video on making an example grotesque face.

Step 3) Sculpt a grotesque face of your own in Zbrush.

Upload images of your sketches and finished Zbrush sculpt to the PUBLIC class website.