A lighting challenge
I've always loved symbolism and minimalism. With this piece I had a clear intention of what I wanted to say so the only question was: how can i make this 3D?
FIREBOY
Innocence, awe, curiosity and destroying what we love.
DO WHAT YOU KNOW LEARN WHAT YOU DON'T
I chose to sculpt the flames of the Fireboy to have a solid stylized graphic shape. Once the texture spiked up the temperature i knew i had to create some effects like smoke and sparks to add to the realism. This is where a dabbled in Houdini and proceduraly creating volumes that Renderman could interpret as a VDB volume.
Last thing I did was to add 2 scientist and a camera in the background (barely visible). This changed the ambiguous setting to a laboratory flipping the context and added a new layer to it.