Hello. I will present you making of my “Child's Nightmare”. It was created for CGArena.com Challenge.
I'm an amateur and beginner in 3d art, and I used only Open Source and freeware software, and I won the “Nightmare” challenge. I think that should encourage many young artists to participate in challenges and show their art, learn from others and let others learn from them. Model was created and rendered in Blender. For textures and post production I used Gimp, and Art Rage 2 for some details. I've been working with windows and linux operating systems.
Concept
The concept came to me very quickly (after that some say that my mind is messed up). I wanted to show a nightmare in a way that is a little bit different than scary-monster-with-big-teeth-chasing-a-child. After some thinking I realised what's the most terrible part of nightmares is infirmity. No matter if we are seeing something scary or if we running away from something, the most terrifying feeling is that we know that whatever we'll do we can't change anything, can't run away.
I started with something, I could name “more standard nightmare”. A boy's dream – he's seeing that something terrible will happen to his mother. He's seeing a murderer and, as it's a nightmare, he can only watch. The stitch on his mouth is a symbol of his infirmity; it gives us no doubts – he just can't do anything (can't warn his mother), he can only stare. To make things more dramatic, I decided to show pictures of family (mother, father, son) on the wall, to make suggestion, that murderer is boy's father. Later I've realized that I was very close to make it even more dramatic, but less brutal and less shallow and give viewers more possible ways to interpret it. After taking away knife from father's hand, I had picture of boy who's witnessing something bad happening inside the place that should be safest place for him – his family and his home. Is this man a stranger and father is out of home, and boy with his mother are defenceless or is this boy seeing father beating mother? And is it just a very bad dream, or maybe it's in-dream reflection of this family everyday life?
I wanted to use some metaphors – stitch shows us stifled cry of a boy. Showing only shadows of parents help us to focus on main character – a boy, but I also wanted to picture with this composition that adults often forget about the fact that their problems are much more painful, dark and big for their children, who are left without any explanation, not able to understand, left with fear and confusion.
To make picture more clear and understandable, I've added some well known attributes (pyjama, teddy bear), some easily readable symbols (pictures of happy family – from boy's point of view, and dark shadows of fighting parents on them) and the picture was ready. The rest was only a craft.
I've joined the challenge late, and I had to work fast. I decided that I will work only on parts of picture and models that will be seen in final render.
I've started modelling a boy with a single face and then, by extruding, I built his head, arms and body. I left parts of body covered with clothes simple and blocky.
When base model was finished I've unwrapped mesh and assigned uvs. I created pyjama on a boy, very simple and easy – in “da vinci pose” (and assigned uvs before next actions). My plan was to animate boy's movement from base pose, to desired pose while simulating soft body with pyjama and letting it to drape on boy’s body. I've made quick and dirty rigging and posing for a boy. I gave him 200 frames to achieve final position and additional 50 frames for pyjama to drape softly only by gravity.
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