The CGSociety and NVIDIA are proud to present the winners of our new competition, NVArt: Amazing Creations, the first in a series of worldwide competitions to be held during 2008.
Artists were invited to submit computer-generated imagery that could exist only in a virtual, imaginary world. The winning art was unveiled at a reception at the San Jose Museum of Art on February 1. The exhibit will run through February 8 and is open to the public. In addition, the art is available for viewing online at events.cgsociety.org/NVArt/01/winners.php.
“Throughout the ages, artists have been dreamers and visionaries, creating truly amazing and inspiring works of art,” commented Mark Snoswell, president of CGSociety. “But they have been limited by the physical media in which they work. The NVArt competition embodies the attraction of digital art: the opportunity to create compelling images free from physical limitations.”
Dan Vivoli, senior vice president, NVIDIA, added: “At NVIDIA, we have always been inspired by the incredible creativity of 3D artists and content creators and we were delighted to see how this contest ignited their imaginations. Liquid sculptures, fractal growths, knotted highways and myriad shapes, textures, colors -- the submissions took our breath away.”
This competition has celebrated the very essence of the creativity that defines digital art. Digital artists don’t have any barriers to realizing their wildest ideas. They can build whole virtual worlds and render them in a way that makes them almost tangible and embodied with life.
Artists worldwide were challenged to create images of the most Amazing Creations. We called for images that captured the essence of something that could only exist in a virtual world. It is also interesting to note the global spread of winners and honourable mentions. There are no two artists from any one country: Czech Republic, Canada, Saudi Arabia, France, Argentina, New Zealand, Poland and Thailand. The most powerful attraction of digital art is its ability to create truly amazing things that cannot exist in the real world.
Growth of cubic bacteria Václav Pajkrt
Czech Republic
Vaclav Pajkrt said this week he was humbled and surprised after hearing of the success of his image in this inaugural NVArt contest. Vaclav works as a graphic designer in advertising, an area quite different to the fractal abstractions he generates in his personal work.
He says his goal was to connect his experience from 3D graphics with some interesting mathematical shapes. Inspiration for his scenes comes from macro-worlds and from fascinating views from scan electron microscope.
For "Growth of cubic bacteria’, Vaclav wanted to create an interesting form that looked like a photograph of small structure micro-organism. “It is all generated in Xenodream 1.5 and done by so-called six holons. I use fourteen lights to light up the object. Then I rendered straight into it. Xenodream has something like voxel rendering technique, so it can feature very tiny details. I take this raw render into Photoshop and resample the image. Next I create a background, simulate depth of field, simulate fake chromatic aberration, make some color correction and finally I add digital grain.
This is a screenshot from Xenodream
Four judges selected this image as their first choice. The composition and depth of field propel the subject into life. It has an organic feel and a sense of energy that are highly appealing. The colour palette also supports the organic nature of the image. It is also noteworthy that 4 of the 43 finalists images were by Václav. Mark Snoswell
I absolutely love the clever balance of the aquatic color scheme with hints of fiery orange and yellow along with those sinewy vines or strings that surround the branches. Francisco A Cortina
The graceful composition and cool colouring contrasts well with a sense of movement in the objects. Shelley Page
I generated many variations, then I selected the best.
A raw render. It took about eight hours to finalize.
Depth map.
I applied a Frischluft Lenscare plugin to simulate DOF effect.
Background added.
Some color shift to green tone.
More saturation and more warm tone. Add new layer to fake sub-surface-scattering on fibers.
Touched up some shadows, added other layer, then applied Frischluft BoxBlur to simulate fake chromatic aberration. In the end I use Grain Surgery filter.
