Hello, I wanted to share with you a project that I really enjoyed working on.
It’s a model for the film “Le Larbin”.
The story is simple: a rich kid who does anything is drugged and kidnapped by his father to make him believe he has been sent back in time to 1708.
The father’s goal is, of course, to teach his son a lesson, and to organize all the challenges, the team (in the film) develops the scenarios around a model.
The model was also used to create the opening credits of the film. Here are some photos they sent us:
Even though almost all of the modeling was done in Blender, Rhino allowed me to prepare the parts for 3D printing, assemble all the elements into a single 3D file, and check the adjustments between these different parts.
I modeled all the elements except for the characters, which were supposed to represent the actors in the film and were created by a 3D artist.
Most of the elements below were created from Quixel files, which had to be adapted to scale constraints and create variations.
There were two of us working on this project: I primarily handled the modeling, fabrication, and terrain, while a second person mainly took care of painting all the other elements.
The modeling phase was standard work, but the fabrication phase was truly amazing.
In this kind of project, you forget what a square, a ruler, or a caliper is.
You completely forget words like “tenth of a millimeter” and even “cm”, and do everything on the spot and by feel.
So, a refreshing project!
And to give a little publicity to the company that hired me:
In truth, the model is simple, it’s just that it was very nice to make.
It changes from modern square architecture…
And when virtual, digital, and traditional manufacturing meet, I’m completely a fan
I found these photos:
Oh! how I would love to have more projects like this !!!
No, all the vegetation is done by hand. There is flocked zeechium, lichen and even nylon brush for the reeds…
But if you’re looking for 3D trees, the ones from Twinmotion are probably the ones I’d try first.
I worked on two of those films building miniatures. The Dark Knight and Lord of the Rings. I was trained as a model model maker working with the team that did Ghostbusters, Bladerunner and Star Trek the motion picture. Those were good times. If you want to take a step back into the way back machine check out Sense of Scale on You Tube. Its a documentary by Berton Pierce who also worked on Grand Budapest hotel building miniatures. Sadly that industry has all but died. Nothing more than a novelty to some directors.
The Youtube channel is really nice, It’s quite rare that I work in the film industry, so for my part, the profession of model maker is not dead and I find this kind of project creative and entertaining.
I continue to make planes, boats, rockets, drones, trains, …, for industry, from miniature to 1:1 scale, but it is true that I do not see dragon heads in the workshops and even less dragon heads known to the public.
All these models make me dream, on the one hand by their imaginary dimension but also a lot by their almost 100% manual manufacturing. I am nevertheless very satisfied with my experience and all the possibilities of digital manufacturing that we have today. Whether by software or by CNC, we have a lot of possibilities. Maybe one day manufacturing for industry will be 100% digital (which seems to be almost the case for films) but currently my work is 50% digital and 50% manual.
And since we are on the Rhino forum, I can say that, apart from digital sculpting work, I do everything with Rhino whether the client is working on Blender or SolidWorks.
Certainly some performance improvements would be welcome, but a few days ago a client who works on Catia was surprised that I could open the entire design of his aircraft on Rhino to prepare the machining of the molds or even the waterjet cutting paths before manufacturing.
I love my job! and it is certain that purely visual models are pleasant to make…
