How to Create a Cute Story About a Little Bulb by Blender: Introducing FGT Art May Winner, Anahad Kashyap

As a platform to show CG talent, FGT Art, organized by the best cloud rendering service provider, Fox Renderfarm, welcomes CG artists all over the world to show off their impressive 3D artworks which were rendered with Fox Renderfarm. Congratulations to our FGT Art May Winner - Anahad Kashyap, a young freelance artist who is proficient in Blender regarding modelling, animating, and rendering.

Anahad’s award-winning artwork “Ignore”, made by Blender and Mixamo, is interesting and lovely, showing a cute story about a little bulb. Let’s find out how he created the artwork in the exclusive interview below.

• Anahad Kashyap
• Freelance Artist
• From: India

Fox Renderfarm: Hi Anahad! Could you have a brief introduction about yourself?

Anahad: My name is Anahad Kashyap and I am currently studying B. Des. Industrial Design in Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India.

The date “23rd May 2021” marked one year of me learning 3D modelling and CG and my work experience includes doing a few freelance projects and making videos for my YouTube channel.

Blender Showreel 2020 © Anahad Kashyap

Fox Renderfarm: Congratulations on being the May winner of FGT Art! How do you feel about it?

Anahad: Honestly, I am super thrilled and honored that you guys chose me as the winner and I can’t thank you guys enough.

Fox Renderfarm: Could you share with us your inspiration/references/moodboard of the work ‘Ignore’?

Anahad: Earlier I took a challenge of creating one digital render daily for a month and on my 6th Day I created this:

This was inspired by a very old advertisement of an electrical company popular in India. Actually the thought of a personified Light Bulb excited me a lot and I set on making it. One of the biggest hurdles I faced while making this was “how to make it believable?”........I know it sounds a bit ironic as the character itself doesn’t exist at all. My references included pictures of light bulbs, nuts and bolts (duh!). Few of them are:

Fox Renderfarm: How long did it take to finish the work?

Anahad: The whole process (modelling and texturing) took me around 12-13 days of mostly working at night due to college. Majority of my time was spent on creating the environment because the character was already done…...I just modified it a little to match human proportions better.

Fox Renderfarm: The character is cute, could you share with us the character design and modeling process?

Anahad: The character modelling took around 5-6 hours completely cause although not very complex, I wanted to make it as detailed as possible. Few clay renders are:

Then comes the most important part of making any 3D render feel realistic, which is adding Surface imperfections. There are many types of surface imperfections like micro scratches, fingerprints, dust buildup in crevices, etc.

The surface imperfections which I considered for the character were fingerprints and micro scratches.

Fox Renderfarm: The environment is rich and realistic, could you introduce how you set the environment and made all the details?

Anahad: Ah yes, The Environment (sigh!)......By far the most work I have ever done on any 3D environment. Everything in the scene (like the laptop, brick wall, poster, windows, ferris wheel etc.) was self modelled and textured. And just like the character, surface imperfections are suuuuuuuuuuuper important here also, like surface scratches on the table top, wipe marks on window panes, fingerprints on the laptop screen (It’s a touchscreen laptop 😝😝), etc. Here are two images of the environment….one without surface imperfections and one with imperfections.

• Without Imperfections:

• With Imperfections:

And the thing even more time taking and frustrating than self modelling all the assets is making a visually balanced composition i.e. positioning all the assets carefully to make the scene visually pleasing and ensuring that none of the areas look more visually weighted than others. One has to ensure that the focus point of the scene (in this case that being the bulb character) remains in focus. Here is one of the MatCap render of my scene:

I used MatCap view to arrange the composition of the scene and if the project demands it, I sometimes render the whole animation sequence in MatCap view because it saves a lot of render times and gives an exact view of how the animation would look when fully rendered.

Fox Renderfarm: As a freelance artist, why do you choose Blender as your main tool, and what is the biggest advantage of Blender for you?

Anahad: As a growing freelance artist, Blender offers the complete package of what a 3D artist could need. It has features like support for fire, water, cloth and smoke sim, 2D animation, video editing(basic), sculpting, remeshing, etc. along with the primary use case which is 3D modelling and animation.

Personally, the biggest advantage of Blender for me is the ease of use and a very flat learning curve. I don’t have anything against any other 3D modelling apps and I am aware that all of them are unique in their own way and have their own set of features but for me Blender had the most visually appealing viewport and less intimidating controls for a beginner.

Fox Renderfarm: How do you improve your CG professional skills? Could you give some Blender learning advice to CG learners?

Anahad: This is a question where I can answer both the parts together! The thing I do apart from all the freelance work is I try to recreate movie scenes as closely as possible. Like watching movies from great directors like Steven Spielberg, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan and picking scenes from the movie which look the most visually appealing to me and then recreating them in Blender. The first step to this includes matching up the 3D camera with the camera used in the film along with the correct focal length. For this I use an app called “fspy” which works perfectly for this. Hope this helps!

Fox Renderfarm: Have you used or heard of Fox Renderfarm before? If yes, how do you feel about it?

Anahad: Actually I did hear about Fox Renderfarm earlier but never got around to using it. But when the time came for rendering my project, It was very much clear through the creation process that my PC won’t be able to handle it. So I decided to give it a try now I freaking love it. The features I love the most are:

• Super fast transfer of heavy files
• Reasonable Price
• Easy to use Interface

Can’t wait to use it for my YouTube videos!!!!!

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

Anahad: Yes there are a few things which I would like to say to CG enthusiasts…….Never get disheartened by looking at other great artist’s work on social media. Nobody starts at the top…….And to never give up…….One Day the grind will pay off in one way or the other.

Koenigsegg Gemera © Anahad Kashyap

Who’s our next FGT Art winner? Shine your talent and win great prizes!