Eva Vomhoff took second place in the Fairy Tale Challenge with a beautiful moment in time.
An incredible journey, 1,001 Nights is a legendary collection of tales framed around the simple story that Eva was able to capture in a single moment. Scheherazade telling her One Thousand and One tales to the Sultan to save both of their lives.
Interview by Michael Haggerty
The best part about GameTextures.com sponsoring these challenges is that access that I get to have to amazing artists that are forging their own paths forward in this industry.
Eva Vomhoff won the second place prize, 6 months of GameTextures.com totally free. They won this with a super cool take on an old collection of folktales, the “Arabian Nights”. This seems to be a sort of theme with their work, there is a lovely focus on interpreting old tales, legends and classical music.
Eva dabbles in both character art and environment work, showing a good eye for both aspects of 3D game and movie art. The characters are all beautiful stylized creations while the environment work is a broadly beautiful spectrum of stylized and semi-realistic. It is hard to oversell the breadth of their personal style and the portfolio is a treat to dig through.
Now lets get into the interview!
Michael Haggerty: Have you gone to school for Art?
Eva Vomhoff:
I haven’t attended any kind of art school, but as a hobbyist I was interested in drawing, modeling and building all my life.
MH: When did you first know you wanted to be an artist?
When I saw the cinematic sequences of the Diablo video game series I was stunned.
The mood, environments and characters were a great inspiration and motivation to get into 3D.
MH: Do you have any professional work we could show off?
E:
Together with Alfred Czech we held several courses at Blender Summer School.
MH : What are your short term and long term goals as an artist?
E:
I am continuously trying to improve my 3D skills. Although I also love to create environments, my focus is on character art. This includes modeling, rigging and animation in Blender.
So I would like to participate in some more animation projects, and possibly a video game.
MH: Is there a link to your portfolio?
MH: What inspired you to use this particular story for this Challenge?
E:
I participated in this challenge because I love fairy tales of all kinds and countries.
The story about Scheherazade is the frame story for One thousand and one nights. Scheherazade might be the role model for a story teller because she heals the bitterness and grief of the Sultan with her stories.
I tried to picture this within the scene.
MH: This is a nice little diorama, how long did it take you to create?
E:
It took me about 2.5 weeks working in the evenings. Modeling and rigging the characters took some time, but I wanted to be flexible with the poses since i didn’t know what would work in a full 3D view like Sketchfab.
After the core poses were set, I added more and more details to the characters and the environment. I had to stop at a certain point to avoid getting the scene overcrowded.
MH:I particularly enjoy your use of light, creating shadows cast as though by moonlight from the outside, how far did the lighting for this piece push you and did you walk away with any new understanding?
E:
I wanted to create a moody night scene without it become to flat or boring. Only using the lighting within Sketchfab I tried to use elements of the scene as the window grating to break up shadows and make the lighting more interesting.
MH: You tell a pretty compelling story in under 100k tris, do you prefer the low poly end of the art or was this something new for you to explore?
E:
I always try to stay as low poly as possible.
Looking forward to seeing more of their work, the short films are fun and engaging while the artwork itself is beautiful. Make sure you follow them wherever you can to keep in the loop with their ever evolving body of work.
