I grew up seeing fairies living in houses made of wood and flowers located in the air or in a hidden village. In contrast to that idea, I wanted to develop an environment where a fairy stays closer to the ground being rooted in a world that thrives off of fear, respect, and a sense of adventure.
I took influences from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, Peter Pan, the Tinkerbell films, and classical artists such as Caravaggio and Pieter Claesz.
Coin Breakdown
The golden treasure in this still life very notable due to its iconic appearances in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
I originally implemented the design into the geometry by using an alpha (seen on the left) in Zbrush, textured it in Substance painter, and imported it into Blender. However, the geometry had become extremely heavy and the textures were not translating properly into Blender. It was very time consuming to attempt to fix without starting from scratch. I ultimately decided to take an alternative route.
To resolve my problem, I created a simple cylinder in Blender and reformatted it to the dimensions of what I wanted my coin to be. I found a free texture of the coin and painted it onto my geometry. I created a normal map out in order to create some imperfections (seen on the right). Recreating the coin this way allowed me to populate my scene with more coins as seen in the final scene render.
Ring Breakdown
Every pirate I can think of has a ring on their finger. I thought it would be fun to create a unique ring that pays homage to what every pirate holds dear, their ship.
I sculpted the head of the ring a bit rougher than a gem because I wanted the ring to have a unique head piece. The texture of the stone is rough which I thought would be an interesting contrast with the very new and bright holder and ring band. The stone has been beaten and is rough but is still valued enough to be kept in a new and detailed band. There is mystery in that.
The holder is in reference to a steering wheel of a ship. The ring band has a "Dead Men Tell No Tales" inscription and symbols of a skull and ship on either side.
Lost Things
The various artifacts found in the scene are lost things. These models were created to break up the textures a bit and give the scene a bit of variety. Making the lost things and playing around with textures was the most fun I had during this project.
