Corruption
Update: see The Making of Corruption!
Now:
During my early sculpting days, when I sat in on a few of Valerie’s art classes, I developed an interest in making my own 3d digital sculpture pieces. This is perhaps my most literal attempt, the lighting and depth of field and little details were all intended to produce the effect of realism while still obviously describing an art piece sculpture.
I still like the focus, and the “film grain” noise, but the raindrop-looking “scratches” that I added don’t really work. I could have done a lot more to make this image look properly distressed like an aged black-and-white photo, though perhaps this is as far as I could get at the time.
Scratches aside, I do like the slight perturbations around each hole created by the worm.
Then:
My inspiration for this sculpture came from a combination of two ideas, both spawned while I was sitting in on some college-level art courses. The professor in the painting class was urging students to think about why they were creating art, to what purpose? To realize their goals and use art as a form of expression. In the sculpting class, the professor was asking students to explore ways to combine two forms; I started coming up with imagery to express some thoughts I had just below the surface and quickly sketched out some ideas and forms. Right after drawing a worm insinuating its way in and out of a cube I knew it would work to represent the concept of corruption I was envisioning.
To emphasize the sculpture’s form I decided to make the image monochrome, while trying to implement a lighting scheme that would be realistic and at the same time shape the curves and separate the sculpture from the background. Depth of field was used to blur the background slightly and further separate the sculpture from its environment, and accomplishing that effect required several rendering passes and some compositing work in Corel Photo-Paint. The rest of the work (sculpting, lighting and materials) was done in 3D Studio Max. Though I liked the original clean render, the concept of corruption and the somewhat photographic look of the monochrome image deserved to be dirtied up, so I processed it in Photo-Paint to give it grain and weathering effects.
This image was created in January of 2002.
Nice work, I’ve done a little bit of work in 3DS Max but I didn’t even think about using it specifically for sculpting abstract art. That’s a fascinating idea. I’m definitely going to try that in the future.
I love the concept you’ve got going here too. The contrast of the two forms does convey corruption very well. The perfect order of the cube has been corrupted by the invasion of the worm.
Nice effects too. I love the soft lighting and the depth of field. The textures also add quite a bit to the image. Overall, I think it’s awesome. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the kind words Nathaniel. This was a bit of a departure for me, and it’s always helpful to get some good feedback on a piece that is a bit outside my usual beat.
Your site looks great by the way, love the fire beasts, plus art on display I’d be proud to say was mine.
I find this fascinating, because in my art class I am also working with the theme of corruption. One question that i built up when i looked at this piece was how exactly is it showing corruption? what is the corrupt, if the first question is unanswearable.
Marlenis- Sorry for the delayed response.
I’m a fan of the idea that art can be interpreted in multiple ways, there’s no one correct interpretation.
The simplest view might be that corruption is something that happened to the previously pristine cube when the worm tunneled through it.
You might also consider the worm itself to represent corruption, lurking within the edifice that is the cube, and shown here in a rare moment when it is very visible.
I welcome other interpretations…