A fourth batch of impressionistic photography of birch trees, sitka spruces, sycamore and chestnuts coupled together with the leaf litter and patterns that makeup the landscape. If I had the resources I would have one of these printed large scale on a crisp white wall.
Another group of impressionistic images inspired by the paintings of Monet. There was so many densely populated birch trees stretching across certain areas it felt as though my eyes were attempting to cherry pick on specific elements, instead giving way to the coloured blotchy static and welcoming it as a whole.
A second batch of impressionistic photography from trekking through the woods to hunt for texture. I find noticing the small things about the makeup of my surroundings in these peaceful places to be such a therapeutic and grounding experience.
A series exploring the texture and colour found in nature, in particular the dappled wonders of birch trees. Inspired by the vivid impressionistic paintings of Monet I set out to capture the marks, speckles and scratches and smudges that makeup the picturesque landscapes of rural Ireland.
I have been working on trying to achieve a more painterly style with the Oasis world of The Green Glider animated short. To achieve these current renders I collated together many bunches of the 3D trees and plants and rendered them out, I then brought the renders into photoshop and painted over them in three different versions, 1 being the original scratchy and more defined version with clearer visible brush strokes. The second and third iterations blurring them out so they could plop nicely in the background to add more depth. I also made cooler and warmer versions of each painted tree mound and painted some shapes to act as leaves to bulk out areas as seen below.
〰️The Oasis Painted Tress – Clear〰️
〰️The Oasis Painted Tress – Blurry〰️
I then brought those renders back into Maya as alpha maps and situated them accordingly within the scene and added in some of the original 3D trees for the foreground so that it gave more depth of field. To give me more control I used render layers where I added the elements in different collections and rendered them separately – so a render collection for the furthermost elements and a collection for the foregrounds and so on, it means I can have a lot more control in post production if I think something could be blurred further or possibly blend more with the sky colour to give more atmospheric perspective.
There was one caveat – previously all the grass was done with alpha maps which was causing a problem where the scene was so populated with alpha maps that light couldn’t render through them and meant that they were rendering black, I found out I had to dial up the render settings to offset this – the ray depth to be specific which resulted in ridiculous render times! So using what I learned about my Boogie Woogie Jive film and the ongoing Ersilia film, I had a muck about with using Maya’s ancient paint effects which worked wonderfully. Within the many keyframe achievable paint effects parameters there is the possibility to animate a slight breeze to the grass, I will definitely be giving that a whirl and see how to looks. I think with these many trial and errors the Oasis is starting to come to fruition, things can be pushed more but I think I am heading in the right direction.
Gentle Giant 