In a world where 3D digital imagery is ubiquitous, it takes a lot to stand out from the pack. Berlin-based artist Cornelius Dämmrich is a CG artist creating stunningly detailed three-dimensional vistas inspired by a variety of sci-fi and dystopian films.
Dämmrich's work perfectly straddles the hyperreal sensibility intrinsic to CG art with a conceptual artist's eye for detail. Each painstakingly composed image takes the artist months to create, and the result are single-frame artworks with so much visual information you can zoom in and out to create an entire story from just one picture.
The latest piece from Dämmrich is called 6088AD. The artwork (above), showing a solitary astronaut standing in an industrial laneway ominously monitored by an armed robot, was generously released with a large amount of supplementary content. A video accompanying the piece offers a breakdown of all the visual elements illustrating the enormous volume of work that goes into such a detailed creation.
Dämmrich is also cleverly selling a supplementary tutorial to accompany the work, which includes over eight hours of timelapses, 1.5 hours of video commentary, three step-by-step tutorials, a soundtrack and a 3D Scene with all the assets and textures.
Another extraordinary piece from the artist shows an astronaut hovering in front of an illuminated phone box in a foggy, abandoned car park. Called 52HZ, an accompanying video shows how many alternate variations can be snapped from the single, giant 3D visualization.
And for those interested in the nerdy details, Dämmrich notes on his website, "The scene took around 7.5 gigabytes of vram on two GTX Titan Xs and contained about 21mil polygons. The wide shot was rendered at 8000x4800px and took over 50h to render with the Octane 3.0 Alpha for Cinema 4D."
As well as fascinating earlier pieces, such as Haze and Mercury, Dämmrich worked with Dr. Masahiro Ono from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2015 to create a series of sci-fi-inspired concept spacecraft. Dubbed Comet Hitchhiker, the concept is designed to be able to orbit and land on small bodies such as comets and asteroids.
Take a look through our gallery for a deep dive into Dämmrich's amazing work and check out his website for full info on tutorials, plus some free image elements for budding CG artists.
