3D DAS Airdry Clay & Mockups

Media

Wanting to try out some more hard-setting media, I picked up a pack of DAS air drying clay. Though this isn't a brand particularly raved about, I wanted to try it out and see how I worked with something that was a little more sturdy and allowed for less detailed sculpture. Having used brands such as Super Sculpey in the past, I knew what high end levels of craft you could produce using them, but for this brief I wanted something that felt a little more raw.

The media itself was great to work with, the air drying facet made sure that I didn't spend forever perfecting each model before it was done, and lent itself more to shape driven character work. Once dry I photographed the models with coloured card backgrounds. Bending the paper to create infinity wall meant that when photoshoping a gradient was made that helped give the pieces a sense of depth.

Originally I was going to paint the models and just edit the levels in photoshop, however once they'd dried I really liked the textures and surface that the models had when photographed. I worried that painting directly onto them may take some of that away and cheapen the look slightly. It was here that I decided to draw over my images using a thin pen brush on photoshop.

The juxtaposition of digital and analogue media in this fashion worked wonderfully! I was able to get across a sense of delicacy and detail through the digital addition of features without it looking crass. I mocked up a few of the models as album covers to see if they fit the tone of voice I was striving for; and finally my 3D renders were matching and amplifying the emotions of my 2D illustrations.

Name // Title Considerations

I also began thinking of an album title to use throughout the pieces for the launch. Each image would have this title on it so it had to fit with all the tracks. I opted for hand-rendered type as I felt it fit best with the human emotion I was trying to convey. Currently the album title stands at The Sad Playlit, but that doesn't embody all of the tracks, while they may be intimate and vulnerable, not all of them are specifically sad.