My name is Vadim, James O’Brien is just nickname, I’m 3D Artist, 19 years old. I’m from Russia (Perm city) but now I’m living and working in Minsk (Belarus), I’m working like lighting artist now on a closed project for now. I studied only in high school and then I dived headlong in CG sea. There weren’t interesting projects that I worked before that’s why I will keep silence about them.
At this time my work is more about lighting in realistic/cartoon cinematics. So, for me, the feeling that I can realize everything I want is very interesting to find new ways in 3D.
I just create a little bit story in my head and then trying to find the best composition.
All my stuff was created in Blender (from models to lighting). I’m not sure about tricks, it’s just a modeling and it will always take much time in any 3D software. Oh, wires and pipes are really easy creating, just create 1 wire and 1 pipe then copy them with little changes (change colors add new small details)
I used 3D scans of a street like a base of a project before but now I create houses and any building by modeling. I just change their location in the scene and make lighting so that they are in shadow.
Many of this elements are from my library of props that’s why I do not have a headache about texturing in this way. Lighting is the most interesting in projects like that. The most important factors are an inspiration, sense of composition, understanding of the meaning that you put into art and skill in CG, I don’t think that any tricks are important – they can’t help you without those things that I mentioned before. But if you have any questions about art you can always write to me on Artstation I’m open for advice if you need it.