Styles & genres

Non-commercial project. 2022-2023

This project was originally conceived as just one weekend render. The goal was to hone skills and put into practice fresh developments in lighting and materials. I took a pix of the Chrystie Street Hotel in New York as a reference and modeled the building.

Firstly, I worked out the atmosphere of the daytime shot. At that moment, I did not yet suspect that very soon my fantasy would be carried away.

The first idea was a noir shot. Images from the movies "Batman" and "Sin City" were spinning in my head. The main ideas of the style: pessimism, distrust, cynicism, danger, woman, hotel, water, night, shadow and the like. Classic noir is black and white film and high contrast. Desaturating the renders, I deliberately left the red channel saturated to emphasize the theme of anxiety and danger with this small detail.

Cyberpunk films such as Blade Runner 2049, Tron and Ready Player One were the next source of inspiration. General ideas:
- global multicultural world;
- colossal inequality and the power of corporations: shining skyscrapers and an abundance of advertising hang over a faceless dark mass of people;
- luxury and high technology coexist with poverty and street crime;
- advanced bioengineering and robotics.
And of course, a lot of neon lights, signs and holograms.

In the process, I was faced with the task of preparing of preparing an image library for advertising signs and holograms. Some I downloaded through image search, some I created using an online abstraction generator. I didn't want to use more complex art from other artists or photographers and decided to use the Midjourney neural network for the first time. In half an hour I got a very interesting and original result from her.

Finaly, I decided to return to reality and turned to the images of the city where the reference building is located - New York. Here I wanted to achieve a humid foggy atmosphere, as well as emphasize the work of reflections of car headlights in wet asphalt. I caught myself thinking that after noir and cyberpunk, this atmosphere does not look sad or gloomy. As for me, on the contrary, it exudes life and freshness.

I really wanted to create more genres. The idea was to create a steampunk atmosphere with steam engines, giant gears, clouds and copper pipes shining in the sun. At the stage of the idea, the post-apocalypse with a reference to the film "I am Legend" also remained. But it's time to do commercial projects and therefore, I said to myself stop.

Thanks to everyone who read to the end and liked.
I will be glad to read your feedback.
Leonid Gavrilyuk
2023