Angel of Love - Not War

I started this project during my advance term at Think Tank Training Centre / Think Tank Online. At the time I was at a steep learning curve and even though I had more knowledge, I also wanted to achieve better and more complex results.

My concept of a beautiful angel that symbolizes love at a time of war, was more majestic in my head than the skills I had at the time. After my mentorship term with amazing texture artist, Claudia Marvizi, and having graduated as a 3D Character Artist, I decided it was time to redo this project (literally) the way I always envisioned.

The wings were a major piece for me, in fact, I could argue it was the single, most difficult part of this project. After studying wing anatomy and bird feathers for quite a while, I though of creating them in Xgen. My awesome Advance term supervisor/artist, Raffael Frank, Senior Modeler at Scanline VFX www.raffaelfrank.com, gave me a "less expensive" but equally challenging alternative of using alphas instead. Placing each one individually was a labor of love. To contrast the organic nature of feathers, I wanted her to have a non-organic, golden armour, that would help shape the top of the wings. Once that was done, it's almost like everything else started to fall into place. I like to say that the main character is not so much the angel, but the actual wings ; )

The sign language symbol for "I love you" was also important to the look and feel of this project. I studied many painting of angels and saints. Many of these subjects were painted with hand gestures, codes to very specific meanings. Today we are so overwhelmed by information, yet we can barely communicate without conflict.

The dress, with its camouflage print in pastel blues perfectly blends with the God like sky on the background. The light fighting the dark clouds, a glimmer of hope.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did making it. Thanks for the support!

Simone