July 16, 2012 8:00 AM

by Editor in Chief

Last week has seen some amazing renders that has drawn much attention and deservedly so. The artists have been contacted by www.BlenderNews.org and some of them will be introduced in detail, once the usual "proof" screenshots arrive.

"Behind" recent top notch Blender renders, it's no longer surprising to find people with no formal CG training who humbly consider themselves "hobbyists." Some of them even turned out to be teenagers who are still in high school. (Their renders will be featured in seperate aticle series entitled "Blender Whiz" until they reach a legal age when they can start working as a professional without parental consent.) This phenomenon is becoming more and more apparent. How did that come about? The winner of the Render of the Week Award for this week will provides the answer. 

How, then, can you too qualify for this award? Please remember that this award is reserved for those that are on par with or that excel top notch works published by artists and studios. So please submit your top notch work to www.blenderartist.org or to the Member's Gallery of this site, or Contact Us to show where your work is available on the internet. It doesn't have to be a Blender render, internal or Cycles. A Vray render or any other render is fine as long as Blender was used as a part of your workflow. 

So, it is with great pleasure that www.BlenderNews.org introduces to you the winner of the Render of the Week Award for the week of July 16, 2012: Richard Hoatland.

My name is Richard Hoatland. I live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, USA. I have been using Blender for about 2 1/2 years now. I have never used any 3d software before I started using Blender. Without tutorials from the Blender community, especially from Andrew Price, I don't think I could have learned this on my own.

I don't consider myself an "artist", I am more of a technical person and I think Blender is right up my alley as I can "build" my ideas instead of painting or drawing. 

Mischief in the Subway started out, as I wanted to learn to do an indoor scene in Cycles without any external lighting coming from a window or other opening. Once I finished the room I thought it looked rather un-interesting and boring. So, I started to dirty it up a bit. I was still wanting a basic theme so while modelling some trash I got to the cans and started thinking about what I would do with these cans if I was partying a bit. Thats when I came up with the can pyramid idea. From there it progressed into more grime being added until I got to the finished result. I really learned alot about texturing in cycles, again, thanks to the Blender community.

Related Links:

1. http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?259516-Mischief-in-the-Subway

2. http://www.richardsphoto.com/