'Maya'

Software Used :

Hello! This is an article about the making of my “Restricted Area” artwork. I won’t be talking about the modeling process or shader settings etc. Instead I’m going to focus on how the raw idea was transformed into the final piece.

Ideas surround us. They come as they are or we can make them from things we see in the world. It was about two years ago when the idea of a locust-concrete mixer came to me. I’d seen a concrete mixer go past me in on the street and the angle of the bowl reminded me of a grasshopper’s belly. It was at that moment when the idea for “Restricted Area” was born. I started to think about how I could make this enormous heavy-duty, insect-shaped machine show emotion. My intention was to convince the viewer that the machine was real and able to work. I took pictures of a lot of concrete mixers, analyzed the photos and tried to understand how these machines were made and worked. Then at last there came the moment when I decided I needed to “think on paper”. So the very first sketch was created, where I made a simple collage using a concrete mixer and grasshopper photos (Fig.01)

As you can see it was very rough, so I can’t say much more about it. But after further development this idea became more shaped and detailed. Here are some of the sketches I made (Fig.02).

I tried different technical and stylistic variations. Attempting to move from general to more specific, I started thinking about the mechanics of the thing after I’d established the rhythm, plastics, contour and proportions. However all of these things were changed and re-made afterwards. I also made several sketches illustrating how this idea could exist if it was a different type of insect (Fig.03).

Little by little I fine-tuned the variants until I achieved the desired appearance (Fig.04).

Now I was faced with the task of inventing the functionality of this machine. It meant I needed to create all the basic mechanical parts (Fig.05).