polygonrunway

Behind The Scenes: Coffee Lab Illustrations

Added 2020-10-05 21:43:52 +0000 UTC

I want to create another website design with focus on 3D illustration so I've gave it a thought and came up with a theme. One of my favorite in fact, a coffee.

Fun fact - the first process video I ever uploaded to YouTube was called Coffee Lab and was based on this idea of really complex and unnecessarily scientific way of making coffee. It included a shark in a bath tub. I kid you not :D If you're interested, you can watch it here.

So I thought I'll give this another go, this time with a little bit of a cartoon twist and more vibrant colors.

I've raided the Pinterest for some inspiration and put together a very vague set of images. The reason is, I kind of knew the idea already, so I just needed some style reference to fuel my sketching process. I've picked up some images, that matched the level of stylization I was aiming for and some vibrant color reference too. At the same time, I wanted some reference on the lab glassware and something as a layout benchmark.

This time, the sketching part was a bit painful. I won't lie, I had to erase and draw again several times to find the layout I liked. The first draft was too complex with a lot of beakers and banks, similar to the original idea. It made the whole illustration too technical and far from the cartoon vibe I was after.

In the end, I've settled for some key elements that support the idea of scientific and unusual coffee making. As you can see on the final render, the coffee making setup got a revamp directly in Blender, so it at least looks a bit more like something that would actually produce some drink :) In the end, the layout and overall feeling of the sketch is far more important than exact drawing of the scene. Why not rather use the prototyping power of Blender right? :)

So the final description of the illustration could be "Scientific approach to coffee making with unexpected ingredients".

There were several quick techniques, that helped me with modeling, so let's have a look :)