Articles 888
January 28, 2014 8:00 AM
by Editor in Chief
With the availability of Blender with ever-improving features, it's interesting to observe how it has help some self-taught artists to excel in their ability to create stunning arts. The key to their success? Endless efforts to study and improve their works.
How, then, can you too qualify for this award? Please have in mind that this award is reserved for those that are on par with or that excel top notch works published by artists and studios. If such work does not appear during a given week, this award is not being given to anyone. So please submit your best 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. Any other render engine 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 January 27, 2014: Derek Goff.
Title: "Santa??"
Genre: Character Modeling
Renderer: Cycle
Final Render:
Geometry:
Textures: 
Artist's Comment
About Me:
My Name is Derek Goff, I live in Omaha Nebraska located smack dab in the middle of the United States. I work full time as a civil engineer and Blend as often as I can in my free time. I have been using Blender for about the last 5 or 6 years. I began using Blender to create Archviz type renders for work but soon found that Blender has so much more capabilities to produce true art. I have always enjoyed art and found that I enjoyed traditional clay sculpting at a young age. For me, Blend has provided a different way to make art through digital sculpting and rendering. I tend to gravitate towards outdoor environments with vast amounts of trees and grass. I‘ve started trying to step outside of my comfort zone and produce more art with character sculpting since Blenders Dynamic Topology was incorporated. But I would still classify myself as an environment artist constantly finding beauty in nature.
About "Santa??"
I created this project for the Blender Guru Christmas Competition. Utilizing Blenders Dynamic Topology sculpting, I created the character sculpt having a rough idea in mind. I thought it would be fun and different to see Santa from a different perspective. Maybe, Santa isn't so jolly and fat but more like an ancient creature never seen and living far outside of civilization. All texturing was done in blender, this includes vertex paint for secularity, bump and color for Santa. Bump maps were all done with procedural textures which utilized vertex paint masks to control the intensity and locations affected by the bump maps. Overall this project was a great learning experience for sculpting, vertex painting, particle rendering in cycles, particle instance generation and particle emission with motion blur. I enjoyed its creation and being able to share the result with the community.
Related LInks:
1. http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?321025-Santa
2. http://blenderartists.org/forum/search.php?searchid=1163629
3. http://www.blenderguru.com/category/competitions/