My portfolio on Behance

Hello folks.

For those of you following my blog and wondering why I haven't posted anything in a while - I've recently started using the Behance network for showcasing all of my 3D and illustration work as it's more focused at creative people like me who have more to show and less to say!

Check out my online portfolio at behance.net/bobmarshall

Thanks for looking!

Bob

Illustration - Inside a Cold War Nuclear Bunker

Royal Observer Corps nuclear monitoring post. Image © Copyright  Bob Marshall 2012.

Between 1955 and 1991, more than 1,500 of these underground facilities were located right across the UK, roughly 10 miles apart mainly in remote rural locations. They were of a standard design and constructed of 12 inch thick, steel-reinforced concrete 20 feet beneath the ground.

In the event of a nuclear attack, these posts would have been manned by three members of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC). Their role would be to note the details of a nuclear burst and relay this information to UKWMO headquarters. This information would then be used by government and local authorities in order to decide how best to protect civilian life.

These bunkers had no mains water, electricity, gas, or heating. The only communication with the outside world was by way of a simple Tele-Talk system to headquarters and 3 to 4 other nearby ROC posts in the ‘cluster group’. The master post in each cluster group was the only post to be equipped with radio communications as a back-up.

Royal Observer Corps nuclear monitoring post. Image © Copyright  Bob Marshall 2012.

Had these bunkers been used in an attack, conditions inside would have been rather uncomfortable. The occupants may not have been able to leave the safety of the bunker for many weeks after fallout due to the harmful effects of radiation. Most ROC bunkers were reasonably waterproof but they would have been intensely cold and damp.

The ROC was stood down in 1991 following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist Bloc. About half of all ROC posts were demolished. The others remain in a derelict and abandoned state. A few have been preserved.

Victory - Vive le Tour!

Victory - Vive le Tour!

As an avid cyclist, I simply couldn't resist putting together an illustration to commemorate the stunning performance of British riders in this year's Tour de France. Vive le Tour!

3D City Scene created in Blender/Cycles

Final render (Cycles)

I've been itching to give Blender's new render engine Cycles a spin so this week I decided to spend a few spare evenings working on this fictitious city scene having been inspired by another of Andrew Price's (a.k.a. Blender Guru) excellent tutorials over at http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/how-to-create-a-city.

The new lighting calculations give some satisfying results which I think I'm going to start using on new 3D projects from now on. I've also noticed that complex scenes seem to render much more quickly with Cycles than Blender's internal Raytrace engine and also LuxRender which I am a big fan of.

I am tempted to have a stab at animating this as per Andrew's tutorial but I'll have to leave the 3D workstation on a serious overnight rendering session to achieve it! I modelled about 20 different buildings and used the hair particle emitter to distribute the buildings across the view. I then manually positioned a few of the larger, high-rise buildings in the scene to try and make it a bit more varied. There's probably a lot more I could do to this render but I'm happy enough with it for now.

Blender viewport render looking a bit like SimCity here!