This was sculpted in ZBrush, and rendered in Maya and Arnold. The blurred background plate it a photograph. Everything else is a digital sculpture. I started this years ago as a work project that was canceled before it really got started, and picked it up again recently just because I wanted to finish it as a personal project. It was a little above my head a few years back so I figured it would be a good challenge now. When I picked it up again all I knew was I wanted it to have a certain mood. I couldn’t put my finger on it to verbalize it, but I could feel the mood I wanted. I realized Sunday night as I was putting the final touches on this piece that today is my best friend of 26 years’ birthday. My best friend who passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly in September the year covid started. And then it became clear to me where my inspiration for this image was coming from. I wanted to make something that reminded me of him. Like the many times we would meet at a bar in Manhatten on an early summer weekend afternoon while it was still light outside, eat dinner, drink beer and have fascinating conversations all night until 2:00 am. I would stumble home. My tummy full of beer. The blurry colored lights feeling warm and magical. My brain tingling with stimulation from the things we talked about. How wonderful it felt to feel understood. How amazing it felt to have someone I admired so much in my corner cheering me on like him. He was a kid genius when we met at 24 years old. Buzzing with potential. Cracking open the multimedia scene in New York. A technical pioneer. One of the sweetest spirits I’ve ever met. One of the fiercest competitors. Gone way too soon. So, it occurs to me as I finish this that even the most mundane of images we start are part of the stories we tell. Our stories. This ones for you Jim. Happy Birthday! Cheers!