Making of Slow Decay
(image based on Ghost In The Shell movie)

The Introduction

Hi, and welcome to the begining of my tutorial in which I will talk about the process of making my latest picture named Slow Decay. My name is Toni Bratincevic, I am the 3d artist from one small country in Europe named Croatia. I am 27 year old male whose passion is to create 3d pictures and animations for which I use Alias Maya software. I have been using it for several years. My first contact with Maya was at my first job at local TV station in Varazdin where I gained a wide range of knowledge about Maya. At the moment I am working in company called Vizije in which we use Maya as primary 3D software. I just want to thank my boss Tom at Vizije for letting me use Maya to create my own art. If you are interested in my art please be free to visit my webpage www.interstation3d.com. Except of images, you will also find there some tutorials about global illumination, caustics, making of other pictures ... which are also published on Alias site. Well enough of this, let's move to more interesting stuff...

Inspiration and Idea

The idea for the Slow Decay picture was not my own creation. It is the reconstruction of one scene from the animated movie named Ghost In The Shell, the Japanese animated SF movie which, if you didn't saw till now, I reccomend you to do it. There is also the Ghost in The Shell 2 movie, which I didn't see but I can't hardly wait to see it... maybe it will inspire me to create another image on this topic. ;) Well, let's go back to the scene. Here is the snapshot of the image from the movie which I have used, at the start, to create my picture which is also below:

The snapshot from the Ghost In The Shell animated movie		My picture based on the snapshot named "Slow Decay" FULL SIZE

As you can see, the pictures are very similiar when it comes to position of the elements in the scene. But since the picture from movie is the only reference that I had, I didn't have enough information of how things should look in details so I modelled everything from scratch. Also, a lot of new elements were added as the picture progressed. For example the structure on the left in the original picture was all in black, but in my picture that is one of the most detailed part of the scene. This also goes for the pillars on the right which hold the road. One thing that also changed from the roots is the lighting ... I will tell you later why. ;)

I dint't have a clue at the start of this process what I wanted to show with it. It just started as the reconstruction of the image from the movie. But as the time passed by, and the picture evolved, I made a really clear vision of what I wanted to show with it. Somewhere at that stage I wrote a few sentences which gave me adittional inspiration to finish it. Here is how the story goes:

there is an old man who was born at the time when the earth was unpoluted, clean, with sun shinning in the middle of the blue sky. Nowadays he lives in completely different world, poluted, dark, dirty with everlasting fog. A glimpse of his thoughts : "I didn't see the sun since the time I was young. The blue sky. Where is it now? Does it still shine above this eternal fog? I hope to see it on my last day. I hope that my spirit would have eyes once I fly away, so I can feel it once again. My blue sky, I dream of you every day."