‘Deer King’: How to Create Powerful Deers in Blender

How strong the power of nature will be? When the power of nature rises, it will be even mightier than we expected!

Recently, the Power of Nature Challenge attracted so many 3D artists to show their talent and imagination, portraying the mighty power of nature in 3D art.

Showing the braveness and strength from nature, the work “Deer, the king of the forest”, which was created using Blender, ZBrush, Substance Painter and Photoshop, received an honorable mention in the challenge.

Deer, the king of the forest © Artzai Elorza

The work’s color palette and composition are strong and impressive, according to the jury of the challenge. As the sponsor of the challenge, Fox Renderfarm is pleased to interview the creator Artzai Elorza Arana, who talked about how he made this amazing work.

· Artzai Elorza Arana

· From: Spain

Fox Renderfarm: Hi Artzai, could you give us a brief introduction about yourself?

Artzai: Hi there, thank you Fox Renderfarm for giving me this opportunity. I am really happy for being here :D

My name is Artzai Elorza Arana and I am from Bilbao, Spain. Currently, I am working as a 3D artist in Visyon by Mediapro Group, a great virtual reality company located in Barcelona, Spain.

Palau Moja © Artzai Elorza

Fox Renderfarm: How do you feel about receiving the honorable mention in the Power of Nature Challenge?

Artzai: I was excited when my workmate let me know that I had received an honorable mention. I am very happy with these challenges allowing us to express our creative side… This is beautiful! :D

Fox Renderfarm: How long did it take you to finish the work “deer, the king of the forest”? Did you meet any difficulties?

Artzai: Certainly, I don't know how long it took me but I started thinking about the power of nature from the first day to the last day. I would say 1 hour or 2 hours per day, during 12-15 days.

Yes, I met difficulties because my main challenge always is to improve some techniques or learn new software, so when I tried to use sculpting of Blender, I ended up switching to ZBrush because of the deadline :´)

Fox Renderfarm: As the main character of the work, the deer king is so powerful, could you tell us how you create the deers?

Artzai: Yes, of course! First of all, I made a blocking out in Blender according to the reference draw because I would just have time to focus on more important things. This meme helped me a lot!! hahaha! XD

Then, I sculpted level by level in ZBrush. When this model had good detailing, I made a low poly version and a high poly. I used both versions for normal map baking and I made a good hand painting texture with Substance Painter.

I wanted to achieve hairlight with hairy deers to make a more magical powerful scene so finally, I became a deer hairdresser with hair and fur; I made a nice eye material becoming alive in it. And that’s all!

Fox Renderfarm: The color palette and composition of the work are impressive, could you introduce how you made them?

Artzai: As I said before, I wanted to make a powerful and onirica poster so the color palette started based on orange for the power blood moon and complementary blue for the onirica sky. Then I started making my final color palette.

Regarding the composition, I thought of carrying the attention from the bottom side to the top side of the image.

The lake diagonal would make the viewer meet with the boatman (which gives real scale). Then they go to the mid where the main light gains attention. Finally, the pyramid composition of the huge deers and blood moon light explosion makes the viewer go to hold their head up high like the deer poses. Sure, our eyes are looking for the deer eyes. I don't know if this worked but I tried it, haha.

Fox Renderfarm: What is the biggest gain for you from participating in the challenge?

Artzai: My biggest gain was to finish the challenge with a very good feeling. I think that the good thing that these kinds of challenges have is the short deadline where we can offer all our knowledge and inspiration of the moment in a short time. I will use it like an instant photo of that moment to keep knowing my real progression.

Fox Renderfarm: How long have you been in the CG career? Could you share your education or career experience with us?

Artzai: Wow! My career is really rare. I have always been associated with 3D. When I was sixteen I loved the technical drawing so I tried to use 3ds Max 7 owing to the teacher's suggestion and I made my first scribble but I didn’t have a good computer for working properly. Then I graded in Geomatics Engineering and due to the photogrammetry I started (but not finished, haha) a Philosophy Doctorate in Virtual Reality for Architectural Patrimony in Laboratorio de Fotogrammetría Arquitectonica University of Valladolid. Finally, thanks to this unfinished Doctorate, Visyon by Mediapro Group company offers me the great opportunity to join their company. As of today I am still grateful, I am working almost 5 years as 3D artist in a VR company :D

Fox Renderfarm: How do you improve your CG professional skills?

Artzai: I improve my CG skills working with my teammates because we share all our skills all the time and work on many different typologies of projects such as architectural visualization, minigame, VR experience or animation. VR keeps growing so this makes me learn something new everyday. Fascinating!

Fox Renderfarm: Have you ever heard of or used Fox Renderfarm cloud rendering services previously?

Artzai: Yes, I have heard about Fox Renderfarm cloud rendering services in 3D communities. I remember the first time that I heard was in a Facebook page that someone wanted to know about render farms and prices. So I took a look at all of them and I thought that Fox Renderfarm seemed to care about their community with challenges, online magazines... It was interesting!

Fox Renderfarm: Any other things you want to share with the CG enthusiasts?

Artzai: Yes, I would like to share my ArtStation https://www.artstation.com/clocca where I’ve uploaded some personal projects. I don’t have much content so far, because I’ve been very focused on work projects, but my idea is to start participating in challenges like these in order to spend more time on personal projects, so I’ll be uploading more content from now on.

tyrannosaurus rex © Artzai Elorza

the lost spaceship | WIP © Artzai Elorza