This beautiful piece created by archviz artist Mohit Sanchaniya won the latest Evermotion Challenge. The theme being ‘A Day in the City’, Mohit impressed the contest’s jury with his representation of the Windy City, Chicago. Learn more about his background and the making of his artwork.
Introduction
I am Mohit Sanchaniya. I live in Stockholm, but I’m originally from Bengaluru, India. I’m a self-taught CG artist and creative specialist. It has been a great journey, even though the CGI industry in India is still in the initial stages of archviz.
How I got into 3D
I graduated in civil architecture, but during my college years, I found my passion in the archviz industry. It has since then turned into a full-time profession. It all started out quite suddenly from the movie Transformers, which amazed me in regards to how the characters were brought to life and made to look so realistic. This inspired me to get into 3D and that’s when I started out learning tools starting with Maya and later moving on to 3ds Max, focusing more on architecture. My dad is a painter, which also had an influence for me in understanding color, composition, and art.
My current occupation
I work as a visual designer in TMRW Stockholm, Sweden. I had participated in the TMRW Challenge 2017, in which I won 2nd place. This got me the job in Sweden. Prior to Sweden, I was working as a freelancer in India.
The Evermotion Challenge 2018
I’d been so busy with the work routine that I didn’t find myself growing or improving and learning new skills, and then I saw the Evermotion Challenge 2018, which had an interesting theme, ‘A Day in the City’. This definitely pushed me to participate – not to win, but to focus on learning new applications like Substance Designer.
The idea of Misty Chicago
The topic of the challenge brought out the Idea. I have always made images in different styles and with a specific mood, rather than making typical archviz images, which I find every day. I started looking on Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr, to find the perfect reference which had balance in composition, lighting, color scheme and detail. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any, so I created it myself using the photo-bashing technique in Photoshop. I had almost made 10-15 sketches of this topic in different styles and composition. This process involving so many different creative aspects and decisions inspired me to create ‘Misty Chicago’. so I took almost 2 weeks to complete the project from scratch to the final art.
When I saw the announcement
It was exciting, I never thought I would be able to win the Evermotion Challenge 2018, as so many other artwork pieces were present in the challenge. The other artwork which I felt had the potential to win was Britta Wikholm’s ‘Blizzard’, which was a really great piece of art. Also, I was the first Indian to win this challenge and I was super-happy about it, as it’s hard to emerge in India to become a great artist.
My first experience with Substance Designer
I’d been making materials within 3ds Max as well as using the maps in 3ds Max for preparing complex shaders. But as the complex shaders cause 3ds Max to slow down, I had to find an alternative and better-quality solution. I’d known for a long time that Substance Designer was a great tool for making textures and shaders. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had the time to learn to use it until the Evermotion Challenge. It convinced me to use Substance Designer and add it to my workflow for future projects.
Substance Designer was exciting when I started it out as it was new, and had a simple interface. But it didn’t take much time to get into the workflow after watching Substance Designer tutorials, which helped me a lot in understanding the application and tricks within you can carry out with it.
My next projects
I have a couple of projects and challenges I want to participate in. I’m also looking forward to learning Substance Painter soon, which is also a great tool. I urge artists to try and learn this application as it’s very flexible and efficient at making shaders.
