Enduring Legacy
A piece created as part of the r/blender September 2019 monthly challenge on the theme of "Infinity."
Kintsugi is a traditional Japanese art of repair in which broken pottery is lacquered with golden joinery. Instead of hiding the fact that an object has been broken and repaired, Kintsugi celebrates the fact that the object was broken, and embraces the fact that the break will always be a part of the object's history. This piece uses the aesthetic of Kintsugi to call attention to the fact that humanity has had a permanent effect on the Earth's climate and history. Even if we stop polluting our atmosphere and heating the planet, the fact that we were here will be noticeable through our mountains of plastic, increased background radiation from nuclear bomb tests, and many other things for the entirety of the rest of the Earth's future. The consequences of our existence will be infinite, even if our species will not be.
Final render of this piece. Earth and Moon textures from http://planetpixelemporium.com/earth.html, which are in turn from NASA.
Animation of the model spinning.
A render in a more realistic setting. The colors have also been changed to make them more realistic in this render. HDRI from HDRIhaven.
The full scene rendered with the more realistic colors.
I like to show the evolution of a project so that people can see that every project goes through a stage where it looks awful.
For a time I considered replacing pieces of Earth with Mars, as there is a variety of Kintsugi in which missing pieces are taken from other dishes.
An intermediate stage between the last image and the final render.