Making of the Gargoyle by Shane Higgins, South Africa


The next step was to texture the gargoyle. I hadn’t laid out the UV’s so I began with projecting the textures. This technique only works on stills or flat images. The arm of the gargoyle was being revealed under the stone case that it was carved from. I created a forearm texture in Photoshop and mapped this as a displacement. I used a stock image of cracked mud for the rest of the body. It took sometime but the projections seemed to work well.


A few more props were added to the scene. A moon, clouds, some trees, vines for the wall and falling leaves. Once they were textured I could begin lighting the scene. I started with a backlight representing the moon.

A spotlight with some fog worked nicely. I raytraced the shadows as the trees branches cast uncomfortable shapes. A point light was used for the fill light at quite a low intensity. Once I was happy with the look I could render the shot in the Maya software.


In my final image I adjusted the HSV and contrast in Photoshop. The blur on the leaves were rendered with motion blur in Maya after I animated them falling. Other than the obvious that’s how the image was created.