Simone Ivani: Interview with 3D artist

Hi everyone! We continue series of short interviews with the best artists from 3DModels competitions.

Simone Ivani, author of the «Offset», will answer six questions and give us a look behind the scenes of his work.

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

I’m currently a Freelance 3D artist and a 3D Modeling teacher. I started with 3D modeling at University, during my Architecture studies and then moved to advertising and studying it at digital schools that offered me a way to enter this world.

Where did you find the inspiration for your latest challenge entry? What’s the story behind its creation?

I took inspiration from, of course, Cyberpunk 2077. Japan town is my favourite part of the big Nigh City. It has different styles and the variety of lights and the mood itself gave me the inspiration of creating a very little part of an alley of this kind. The idea to add to the image with the yellow Porsche parked a young boy looking at the car came from real life. While riding with my car I found a boy staring at a sport car parked next to me on the road. For those who like cars…well is a passion started from the young age.

What software and plug-ins did you use to create this image? Did you face any difficulties, and how did you overcome them?

I used Maya as I use it every single day and I find it fitting for doing hard surface modeling and, of course, all the UV mapping process. Using Maya is common and an easy choice to render with the built in render «Arnold». Substance Painter has been a great software for texturing and experimenting new styles.The challenging part for me has been the overall mood, adding fog (using Arnold obv) but maintaining the shapes of the buildings and the car itself.

How often do you do personal projects and keep your portfolio up-to-date? Which one is your favorite?

I usually take at least 4 days per month (weekends at most) to model or sculpt or texturing some things I want to do other than the every day projects or commissions. I think one of my latest works fits well this description, because finishing it, it took like a year, working on it very few times, but in the end I managed to bring it to life.

Uncommonly this model started from a live hard surface course I did, so it’s really special for me and, I hope, for those who followed the course, to look at something completely finished and polished.

Who or what has inspired or delighted you recently? Maybe it was a book, a movie, or an artist.

Lately I’m attracted to both vintage cars and futuristic environments such as Blade Runner’s and Cyberpunk’s ones. There is a lot of references in between and, of course, a lot of sports car of the 80’s to modernize and imagining to bring them there, a sort of resto mod.

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

There are many «rules» that a lot of artist tell or don’t tell. As far as I know, in the last 7 years I managed to keep these three as my favourites «companions»:

1. – Get inspired (from everything you do, you seek and you make/dream.

2. – Don’t be focused on doing something at all costs, the portfolio is something personal other than a key to jobs. The more personal and original and shaped as you want something is and the more natural and cool will look to everyone.

3. – Modeling is a long journey and everyday you could learn something new, so, don’t fret so much, keep and create more and more contacts with other artist and be ready to be judged. Without critics there is no improvement.