ONLINE DATING FLIPPER - FIND'ER
Having happily spent the biggest part of my adult life in monogamous longterm relationships, the whole online-dating / dating-app thing was - up to recently - completely unmapped territory for me. Back in the day, online dating wasn't really a thing. There were a couple dedicated browser-based dating platforms, but Tinder, Bumble & Co had not even been founded yet. Hell, I didn't even have a smartphone back then. It was all "real-world-meet-a-cute-girl-in-the-elevator-crack-a-joke-see-her-later-in-the-bar-round-the-corner-and-eventually-land-on-the-sofar-in-a-dark-corner"-stuff. Fire-cracking start into the thrilling endorphine-rushing, pheromone-pumping adventurous ride down the rabbit-hole of that crazy little thing called love. Awesome, happy times all the way to the horizon, full steam ahaid, Capt'n! You sail out into the endlessly wide and open seas of the world, wonderful years going by, tirelessly plowing on even when life throws a couple gusts, some mild storms or full blown hurricanes your way. Unfortunately though, that wonderful relationship did come to a (peacefull and in the aftermath equally wonderful) conclusion in 2020. So here you are, in your mid thirties, single for the first time in over a decade, and - oh yeah - did I mention the world is in the middle of a full-blown pandemic, making the "real-world-meet-a-cute-girl-..."-tactics a Mission-Impossible?
No to worry though - Tinder, Bumble & Co have got your back:
"Welcome to the wonderful world of online dating!
Where no one ever knows anyone - but everyone knows someone you know, have dated, are dating or are about to date!"
Off you go down a completely different adrenaline-flushing rabbit hole. Your phone is overwhelmed by your sudden increase in screen time, relentlessly power-using that thumb of yours to swipe any card-shuffling-world-record-holder into a corner. Because you know - SHE's out there somewhere in that seemingly endless stack of profiles, and you are going to FIND'ER!
Get that flipper ball into the starting gate and load that launching spring. You are in for a hell of a ride my friend, get ready to be bounced around and roughened up around the edges. It's wilderness out there, and you will have to make your own rules if you want the game to go your way. You will make a lot of mistakes, and you'll fall prey to other people's mistakes. But like anything else in life, you will find your bearings eventually, and that's where the fun part starts - GAME ON !
Close-ups of final image (19500x12000px resolution):
Fully 3D Modeled scene in wireframe preview:
CGI production-process:
1. Modelling holographic assets with X-ray Preview.
2. Holographic shader tree, based on facing ratio sampling and blending of multiple shaders on top of each other.
3. Testing scene lighting and basic shading in Maya with Redshift GPU renderer before taking to Substance Painter for detailing.
Epilogue
Thank you to all the wonderful people that have been part of my session on this flipper, for the beautiful memories and the heart-warming friendships. It has been a fun, immensely interesting, surprising, momentarily painful, incredibly entertaining, eye-opening and enriching experience!
Thank you to all the wonderful people that have been part of my session on this flipper, for the beautiful memories and the heart-warming friendships. It has been a fun, immensely interesting, surprising, momentarily painful, incredibly entertaining, eye-opening and enriching experience!
GAME... ON ?!
