A couple of hours ago Ian Spriggs published another piece, he’s been working on for a while. This is a present of his long-time friend Tony. This is not a scan. It was modeled and textured in Maya and Mudbox. The rendering was done with V-Ray. Additional touch ups and colour corrections were done in Photoshop. The hair was produced with nhair.
Ian has been working on a lot of digital portraits. He’s paying a lot of attention to the works of the old masters and tries to use this knowledge during the production of his amazing works. If you want to learn a little bit more about his techniques, make sure to read his interview with 80.lv.
I think they way we overcome the uncanny valley is empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of the characters we create. All my portraits I have tried in different ways to connect with the viewer. The Portrait of Sean I focused my attention to his eyes, I didn’t want you to look at this portrait and just see Sean, I wanted you to feel as though Sean is looking at you, to make the viewer feel as though they are in his world. In some of my other portraits I have tried to make you see the story of them, by the clothes they wear, by their body language, hand gestures, I want you to feel as if you are having a conversation with them. I will always pose my characters and have a slight expression, you just won’t connect with them if you see them as a mannequin.