adrianlombardo

Studio/Institution: Norconsult Client: Botanical garden Genre: Landscaping Software: Photoshop Description: Would love some feedback on this. Especially curious about the contrasts, I suspect the gamma on my monitor is a bit off. Let me know if you think the contrasts are too high or too low (It isn't supposed to be extremely high of course, with all that rain/fog) Based on a photograph I took from the site, painted over digitally, with a bit of collage. I also think the piece lacks punch a bit, it gets boring fairly quickly. It would be nice to add something subtle rather than gimmicky (like the crow holding a flower) to hold attention for a bit longer, but without loosing the feeling og serene loneliness. It is part of a series, the crow is in all three.

Animation looks technically pretty good. Plenty to learn about aesthetics/composition/lighting, which is also good, it takes time. As others have noted, especially James - speed is very important for professional work. In architecture school I could spend two weeks on a huge panoramic rendering. Today I can do about the same work in two days, or 3/4 as good in one day. This is very important for the firm, but was never stressed at school. Remember that dozens of other professionals on many fields are working simultaneously, and the project only moves as fast as the slowest person. The artists (at least here) are never expected to be the slower ones. Newly graduated artists too often worry about details and forget about streamlining. Making sure to learn your program well and the most important shortcuts, cutting down rendering time, not using unnecessarily high resolutions, getting good texture/item libraries at your fingertips, anything that will help you mass produce. Always ask yourself how you could spend some time now that will save you more time later. The client usually doesn't care whether that palm tree is perfect, that reflection right or this texture has high enough resolution - he just wants the result to look flashy/stunning/authentic/whatever his taste and for the cost to be 5,000 USD rather than 10,000 USD.

I design (and render) buildings professionally, but sometimes I am asked to help make renderings for co-workers, as the office illustration "specialist". This co-operation can be frustrating even when helping my best friends as it seems many designers don't understand the most basic elements of illustration. Some of my colleagues think that as long as the design is great and rendering "realistic", the result will look great. They typically start by giving me a bunch of instructions - how they imagine the rendering. 9 out of 10 times they make several huge mistakes, among them: - Including too much information (The entire landscaping + building + background+foreground+++) - completely ignoring composition, including depth, light and leading the viewer into the image - Focusing on details that are important to them, but detrimental to the composition. - Not giving the "illustrator" any flexibility - Leaving focus points/contrasty areas at the edges of the frame - Not making any preliminary visualisations to prepare and help make the design better - Nitpicking on the tiniest of details that do not affect composition etc - for hours - while I could instead spend my time on a new rendering or improving the composition, lighting etc. - Not being happy with the result, then trying to improve it by making tons of pointless local adjustments while the real issue is either their design or bad composition. I always start by asking the following (politely): 1. Let me (help) pick the vantage point (And time of day, which they don't seem to understand the importance of) 2. leave me some wiggle room 3. Be prepared to alter your design if you see that some things aren't working that well 4. Making a good rendering is no easier than taking a good photograph, even if the 3D model and rendering software is 99% realistic. 5. No lens flares please. Also, I rather not add cutouts of kids with balloons and business guy on unicycle. They do not add "atmosphere", they only add balloons and unicycles. 6. You've seen my previous work - trust me on these tings. Is there anything else that you tell designers before/while making renderings?