Douglas Coupland’s Vincent

One of the most challenging projects I did at PLE was the scanning for Douglas Coupland’s Vincent Van Gogh as part of his Redheads project.

The final piece was realized in bronze by Polich Tallix and was installed at the Pinot Noir vineyard at Martin’s Lane Winery in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.

Under Douglas Coupland’s incredibly detailed direction, I scanned the winner Daniel Baker, then surfaced and modified the raw scan data to match his vision.

Vincent required an enormous amount of surface work, which was done primarily with Mari and Zbrush. Particularly challenging was the hair – the highly specular, wispy quality of hair causes it to scan poorly, so manual re-sculpting was required. Skin detail, wrinkles, and the pupils were all manually enhanced as well, using high-resolution displacement maps and textures as a starting point, upon which additional sculpting was done.

Once we had finished making these adjustments, the digital sculpt was sent to the wizards at Polich Tallix to be cast in bronze.

Special thanks to Jennifer Chiang, who provided assistance with the mammoth task of detailing the hair.

Also, shout out to John Biehler, who put me in touch with Doug in the first place.  (Check out their incredible 3DCanada project here.)

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