priapus

Shooting the Past - WorkDoc

Added 2017-02-16 07:44:24 +0000 UTC

NOTE: You can download a PDF version of this WorkDoc at the bottom of this post. This was made by Andrea, and you can find a complete version of his beautiful project on the Priapus Encyclopedia page.

The factory model

I always wanted to do something with a photo or movie set, and once I completed the model of a rundown factory, I knew this was the ideal background for a shooting session.

The whole setting is compiled from several existing models and took a few days to complete. As you can see in the images below, the original model is a large hall, far bigger than the background that is ultimately visible in the series. After some light and render tests and a few more adjustments, the stage is finally ready for action.

The setting for the first part of the series is a large abandoned engine room, with huge rusty steam engines, boilers, and old, decaying machinery. It’s partially inspired by the wonderful, surrealistic, and nostalgic pictures by Paul Howzey, Christian Richter, and Niki Feijen.

The sense of nostalgia can also be found in the beautiful TV drama Shooting the Past, where the eccentric staff of a photographic library threatened by closure uses the narrating power of the images to save the collection. A beautiful homage to photography, and I couldn’t resist snatching the title.

In the second part of the series, the temperature rises and tension mounts. The action switches to an old foundry, where hot furnaces and melted iron blast fire and smoke into the scorching hot air. There’s a huge anvil, with large hammers and tongs, and the workspace is surrounded by massive forgers and old machinery. This infernal place seems to be the ideal setting for some hot action....

Man and Machine

The initial idea of the series was to depict a shooting session for some advertising campaign, showing at the same time the final output on covers and billboards. Somehow that didn’t work, and instead, I focused more on the classical posing of the characters, and I experimented a bit more with the light and render settings.

I intend to make the second part that I’m currently working on far more dynamic and erotic than the first chapter. I never work with a storyboard or well-defined plan, but the idea is to have the models interact more closely. They start by forging huge chains that will ultimately link their bodies in a playful game together. In the end, they’ll turn their focus on the man behind the lens, and then they’re all in the game...

Of course, the whole concept is not very original, but the posing of the bulky guys in front of the big rusty engines and massive cogwheels seems to be working very well. I’ve been inspired by photographers like Herb Ritt and Lewis Hine, who have made wonderful pictures, and some of their images are truly iconic. The contrast of man and machine is also beautifully illustrated in the Centrale Montemartini Museum in Rome. A visit is a unique experience!

The two models are, of course, also not exactly the average factory worker and are nothing like the antihero of Modern Times. Perhaps they resemble more the worker-hero of the propaganda posters or the beefed-up, jar-headed guys from the fitness magazines.

But although their physique only seems to express dominance and strength (which I love), I still hope to add some classic posing and tenderness in their lovemaking. But of course, their main purpose is just to look sexy, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons.

The characters are based on the DAZ 3D Genesis generation, and with a few morphing adjustments and additional props, they were exactly what I needed for the story.

Somehow, I had far more difficulty in finding the right photographer. I started with the David5 model, but that didn’t really seem to match the other two guys. When I restarted the project a year later, I switched to the newly released Michel7, and that fitted the picture much better.

The making of

To make these images, I use several programs. I generally use DAZ 3D characters, and I morph and pose them in a program called DAZ Studio. Then I export these models into CINEMA 4D, a very extensive program that I use for texturing characters, building settings and props, lighting out scenes, and rendering images. For the finishing touch, I use Photoshop and After Effects for animations. It´s probably not the most efficient way, but it seems to be working for me so far. In any case, it’s quite an elaborate process, and even a smaller scene can take many hours if not days to complete.

DAZ Studio is software produced by DAZ 3D that can be used for 3D art and animation creation and as a rendering tool. The program and a generic Genesis character are for free, and with some additional materials and morphing tools, you can easily shape and pose a character.

CINEMA 4D is a 3D modelling, animation, motion graphics and rendering application developed by MAXON. It’s a very extensive program that is used by professional illustrators and animation studios. It’s not exactly a very accessible tool (I’ve probably only scratched the surface of all the program’s possibilities), but I’ve seen artists do really breathtaking things with it. Very humbling indeed, and it always reminds me that I still have a long way to go.

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor that I use to make the final adjustments and corrections to the image. It’s also a very extensive program, but with some practice, you can get really good results. Wonderful tool.