My Ancient Ruins from the Polygon Runway 3D illustration course I’m taking
I finished creating the ancient ruins this morning. It's the latest episode in the course I'm taking at Polygon Runway. I added my own touches to the illustration—skulls. It needed skulls. Though following the guidance from the course, many of the details are unique. And if I'd started with simply the concept it would no doubt diverge even more than it did in this example. I experimented more with the textures, different approaches to some elements in the illustration, and utilized some lighting features added in recent updates to Blender.
Each chapter of the course has introduced me to new techniques and processes. It has also fired my imagination. I've thought of all sorts of different isometric illustrations I might have fun creating. Some ideas fall into the fan art category—creating scenes from favorite TV shows, movies, or books. Fan art, I think, by definition is focused on fun. People create fan art because they love the source material and want to have fun and connect with it. My short story "The Tribbles' Pagh" appeared in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 9 (this was long before the new 'Strange New Worlds' TV show). That was definitely a work I had fun writing. It gave me an opportunity to extend a favorite episode and explore a "what if?" scenario.
Today I received an art book, Aliens Artbook: A 35th anniversary visual celebration of the sci-fi classic. It is filled with artwork created by those who loved the movie. For my most recent birthday, I received two other art books: The Art of NASA: the illustrations that sold the missions and Labyrinth Bestiary: A definitive guide to the creatures of the Goblin King's realm.
These and many other books inspire me to create my own worlds, discovering my own strange new worlds in my imagination. I write stories about those worlds, those characters, and I'm increasingly spending more time illustrating those places of my heart. I'm thrilled to be able to share them with you.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!
I’m having fun playing with a new challenge—DRIVE-BY STORIES. I’m writing short short stories, under 2,000 words, many under 1,000 words. I’m sharing them to my Instagram stories several times a week. They’ll drop off that, but premium READINARY subscribers can read the full archive of stories here. When I have 100 stories, I’ll publish a collection of them all.
Best wishes, always — Ryan