Surjendu Das: Interview with 3D artist

Hi everyone! We continue a series of short interviews with the best artists from Hum3D competitions.

Surjendu Das, the winner of the « Autodesk team choice » and « Fox Renderfarm team choice », will answer on six questions and give us a look behind the scenes of his work.

– Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do and how did you become a 3D artist?

I am Surjendu Das a student from Kolkata, India. I am currently doing my graduation in Computer Science & Engineering as well as pursuing a diploma in 3D and VFX art.

Here is the link to my Artstation.

Back in the years, I was highly impressed by people on the internet (like Andrew Kramer especially) doing great in-home CGI and VFX short films and artworks. I too wanted to make something cool like that with whatever I had back then, and it is because of that I decided to make a career in CGI thereafter.

– What’s your favorite aspect of creating 3D art? Is there something you specialize in and enjoy the most?

Look-Development and lighting is my favorite aspect of creating 3D art. I enjoy lighting the most and I am aspiring to do a specialization in the same as I am currently pursuing a course in CGI.

– What or who inspires you today? Are you a member of any art communities? Any favorite hashtags you check on a daily basis?

I am greatly inspired and a fan of Retro/80s and Cyberpunk Art styles and movies/games especially.

Other than that I am greatly inspired by personnel like Marek Denko and his highly detailed 3D artworks, Stuart Lippincott and his awesome abstract 3d artworks and more.

Unfortunately, I am currently not a member of any art communities.

I check hashtags like #retro #retroart #interiordesign #surreal42 #motiongraphicscollective #abstract #design #futureart #3dart #vfxguru #cgart #cgi #beeple #3dsmax #rendering #b3d #cinema4d on a daily basis and many more in Instagram.

– Please tell us your five short tips for creating 3D art.

Every artist has his/her own tastes and processes of creating art, that being said, 5 tips for creating 3D art according to me can be:

1. – Gather a lot of references/motivation as you can before creating the scene.

2. – Give great attention to the base model/sculpt as it can make or break a scene.

3. – Search/take pictures of real-world texture references of the particular object as you texture

4. – Time management is an important factor, so break your scene into a separate segment (like modeling, texturing, lighting) and assign a suitable deadline for finishing each of them.

5. – Last but not least, spend a good time on post-production as it is where things start to get as you want it to be.

– Could you please show us any images from the latest work process with a short description. Where did the idea come from? Did you learn something new?

I created this animation recently (please see the link above). It is a very simple and casual loop animation that I created in my free time. I got the idea from various trending retro and space animations and artist Visual Don’s impressive VJ Loop animations.

I did the whole scene in 3ds max and Vray and post-production were done in After Effects.

I learned new ways to handle and animate such a looping scene and optimizing the quality of it for the final render.

– Which of your designs/part of scene/model are you most like and why?

I really liked how I did the lighting of my scene in ‘The Retro Masterpiece’ the most because the lighting was achieved by using over 150+ lights in the scene and it gave me more confidence and knowledge in creating such scenes or even better in the future.