Making of 'Teddy Bear Snacks'

Introduction

Hi, my name is Andrzej Kuziola and I would like to show you how I created "Teddy Bear Snacks". I think by explaining to you the overall work flow, instead of going deep into details, it will be more interesting.

I created this illustration in Cinema 4D, ZBrush and Photoshop for the "Boiler Room" contest. My goal was to achieve a stifling-hot, anxiety filling atmosphere, similar to the basement scenes from the film A Nightmare on Elm Street and also to refer to the vision of Hell where devils torment sinful souls. I was also inspired by human sacrifices made to TÄ"ixiptlas in ancient Aztec civilization.

Thus, the idea of Pandemonium and the Diabolical Boiler God, hungry for innocent, cuddly teddy bears was born.

Process

I started with the boiler in Cinema 4D. I wanted it to look like a worshiped statue of an ancient god sitting on a throne.
I created it using polygonal modeling from Primitives for each object. After establishing the overall look and proportions I added more details mainly using the Extrude Polygons option. By doing it in Cinema 4D I had more control over the process (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

Fig. 01

When I was happy with the shapes and hard surface details, I transferred the model to ZBrush, where I refined details and deformed it with the large size Move brush to achieve a more cartoon-like look (Fig.02).

Fig. 02

Fig. 02

The Demon was created from an old base mesh, reshaped rapidly with Move and Standard brushes and then detailed. It was very quick to model because my goal was to create a cartoon-like, exaggerated character. Correct anatomy and topology were not important for me here.

I used the ZBrush Transpose tools to pose the character and then added as SubTools the modeled accessories and clothes previously extracted from the mesh.

The teddy bear was created from ZSpheres and detailed - again it was a very quick process, using not a lot of detail, just to obtain the desired shape (Fig.03).

Fig. 03

Fig. 03

And finally a shovel - a simple object created in Cinema 4D and then imported to ZBrush (Fig.04).

Fig. 4d_04

Fig. 4d_04

I composed all the objects in ZBrush as SubTools and exported them one by one as low poly meshes to Cinema 4D. This process helps to speed up the test renderings when I am setting up the lights. To achieve the claustrophobic basement look, I placed all the objects inside a cube so that the light bounces off the sides (Fig.05).

Fig. 05

Fig. 05

I did not use any textures here; all the materials used are slightly modified basic Cinema 4D materials changed in Color (shades of red and orange) and Specular channels.

The lighting is simple. I used only one warm, visible light with added noise simulating heat coming from the mouth of the boiler. The light bounces from the walls and illuminates the rest of the scene and accentuates details partially hidden in darkness (Fig.06).

Fig. 06

Fig. 06

When I was happy with the result I swapped the models with high poly meshes and rendered it in Advanced Renderer with the Global Illumination set to Diffuse Depth 3 and the Ambient Occlusion in three separate renders - two foreground and one background. For one foreground render I shifted the light a little bit and turned its visibility off (Fig.07 - 09). By doing it in this way, it helped me in the post-production later on.

Fig. 07

Fig. 07

Fig. 08

Fig. 08

Fig. 09

Fig. 09

I composed all the renders in Photoshop (Fig.10), where I also made some adjustments and overpaintings.

Fig. 10

Fig. 10

To save time during rendering and scene setup only one pile of teddy bears was rendered. To make the basement look more "fully stocked" and apocalyptic for the teddy bears I copied and edited the pile a few times (Fig.11).

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

After that I painted a few layers of smoke to add depth and mood to the illustration. Again, I wanted a stylized look instead of a realistic one and for that so I used my custom brush created from scanned torn pieces of paper (Fig.12).

Fig. 12

Fig. 12

And here's the final image (Fig.13)!

Fig: 13

Process

I spent two days creating the illustration. It won third place in the contest and was then published in Expose 7.
Many thanks to 3DTotal team for giving me the opportunity to share this image with you. Hope you like it and thanks for reading!

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