Watermelon Babies

This is a thing i doodled today since we are close to 4000 children dead in Gaza today.
Tried to avoid gory imagery… and try something… a little unusual.


Heres the 3d model, made with Blender and Krita.

Watermelon babies by Chaitanya Krishnan on Sketchfab

As of 3 November, according to Ministry of Health data, 2326 women and 3760 children have been killed in the Gaza strip, representing 67% of all casualties, while thousands more have been injured. This means that 420 children are killed or injured every day, some of them only a few months old.
- Unicef https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/joint-statement-unicef-who-unfpa-and-unrwa-women-and-newborns-bearing-brunt-conflict

The use of watermelon as a symbol of resistance in Palestine dates back to the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel seized control of the West Bank and Gaza and annexed East Jerusalem. The Israeli government made public displays of the Palestinian flag a criminal offense in Gaza and the West Bank.

Upskilling in Metaverse Tech

In the past year I have explored various platforms and identified skillsets necessary for an artist/creator working with the metaverse. Have conducted experiments to evaluate various platforms and begun learning platforms that are going to be central to this ever evolving landscape.

This includes:
Mainstream game engines – Unreal and Unity
Upcoming platforms such as – Spaces.io and many more.

Progress so far:
Have successfully adapted a 3d scene to work across 3platforms – Unity, Unreal and Spatial

The original scene was born from this sketch.


It was refined and eventually finished piece of 2d concept art.


This was later translated to 3d in Blender using a stylized hand painted texture workflow.



https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/antler-treehouse-green-8ff31b7491634956bbeb22479e6d4a1c
(click to view the 3d model)

The transfer to metaverse platforms and game engines can be seen below:

Unity 3d

 

Unreal Engine



 Spatial can be viewed in 3d at
https://www.spatial.io/s/Antler-Tree-House-6418cbd943e17c7d39f12d3d?share=4018731400729634205

Project Spark

It is a fresh morning on Mars. In his lair, Spark begins his morning routine - oiling his rusty joints and reading last prints of the books he salvaged. His friend Bibi awaits with a little prank! Explore the Martian landfill together with the robot protagonists. First episode of the adventures of Spark & Bibi.

Spark & Bibi by Conrad Justin on Sketchfab

On computer, middle click and drag to pan, or use the annotation arrows to hop around
On touch screen, 2 fingers
(its real-time, so you can zoom in, rotate etc..)


This movie took over a year to create and was a collaboration project between Sketchfab artists:

Lead artist, storyboarding, modelling, rough animating: Conrad Justin https://sketchfab.com/ConradJustin

Modelling, animating: Igor Puškarić https://sketchfab.com/iggy-design
Observatory concept: Chaitanya Krishnan (me) https://sketchfab.com/chaitanyak
Bones and gears: Terrie Simmons https://sketchfab.com/terrielsimmons
Several pipes: dark-minaz https://sketchfab.com/dark-minaz
Ideas, support: Tycho https://sketchfab.com/Tycho_Magnetic_Anomaly

Was fortunate to be part of the team that worked on this fantastic realtime animation short.


My addition was this floating observatory .. sort of in a shattered reality kind of stasis.. like if the base of the tower was a lab where a wierd experiment went wrong and wiped out the lab and froze time in that area

For a detailed breakdown of the whole project check out 
https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/art-spotlight-spark-bibi/

The team presented this project at Blender Conference here

 - https://conference.blender.org/2023/presentations/1902/

Under Strange Suns

Was working on these creatures with this year's Atomhawk contest theme in mind.. wasn't sure if I would be able to get it to a "finished" stage.. but here it is. 

A lone centaur scout arrives on a strange world.

Started with a couple of VR sculpts in Masterpiece VR that started to make sense coming together with a similar color palette as I started painting them in Blender. 

This is the Centaur character:

Centaur ver2 by Chaitanya Krishnan on Sketchfab

And this is one of the flying creatures

Flyer - NPR by Chaitanya Krishnan on Sketchfab

These are the final images I submitted:

And finally here is  step by step breakdown of my process:

Owl Spirit

 

Owl Spirit by Chaitanya Krishnan on Sketchfab

  Did this one in Open brush. heres the original technicolor mess !


And heres the process video
 

and then modified in blender.. some minor posing and material groups.

Re-did the lighting and colors in Sketchfab to make it more presentable..

then went back to blender, did a basic rig and animated it.

GunMech

Tried a different coloring method this time… Working with a predominant dark base.. added high contrast colored elements.

GunMech by Chaitanya Krishnan on Sketchfab

Centaur

 

Had an odd issue with this sculpt.. ran out of canvas space.. and couldn't figure out how to scale it and reposition in VR. Managed it eventually.

Then took it to Blender for some texture painting

Heres the final piece

Centaur by Chaitanya Krishnan on Sketchfab