This was the original sketch the client sent to explain what they wanted. They used overlapping circles to represent how departments work and share information with one another, and the software functionality continues. This was rather dry and uninteresting, as well as unclear.

They had previously hired me to create animated icons of generic printing machinery to show equipment status in their software user interface. They wondered about using the presses and other equipment in the circles, making a stylized print shop. One of the problems with using the existing icons was they all had differing orientations. Unless they wanted a "Picasso-esque" multi-perspective print shop, we'd need to redo the machinery!

I initially began to rough out the layout in Freehand, but quickly abandoned it. In our next meeting, not only did they decide to add more equipment and rearrange things, they also mentioned they'd like to use it in their interactive sales demo CD. Perspective illustrations in a 2D program, such as Freehand, are easy enough to do. Their drawback is that you can't move the elements around later without destroying the perspective. It became clear that this project was evolving -- growing and changing -- on a weekly basis. I decided to use Animation:Master (A:M) to model the print shop equipment in 3D. This way, we could move the pieces around, like furniture in a doll house, until we were satisfied, and only re-render the image. Also, this gave us the future ability to animate the image, whether a fly-through or zoom in for more detail. Here is an early layout of the print shop. We not only moved the furniture, we moved the walls as well!

Modeling all of the elements was an exciting challenge. I chose to go with a simple, clean, stylized approach, based on the icons we had started with. The trick was deciding which details were important, and which were not. Most elements were based on cubes, and the colors were kept generic. Here is sample of the offset press wireframe and rendered model. I put a texture map of a printed piece I had created for Fluent on the sheets at the end of the press. No one would ever see unless we zoomed in, but I was pleased knowing it was there!

Click on either image to go to another page with more wireframe and rendered samples.

While A:M is capable of photo-real rendering, with ray-traced reflections, shadows and texture maps, I intentionally kept it simple, and softly lit -- no bright, shiny highlights, just a nice soft shadow on the floor. I didn't want the technique to overwhelm the image. Here is the final model rendering. The labels for the departments, software program listing, and wire connecting the Logic MIS Server to the computers and Logic stations were added in Photoshop. I would have modeled the wiring in A:M if we were going to do the animation, but at this point, the company Logic had hired to do the interactive CD was behind schedule and over-budget with a nice interface but little content to show for it. Logic decided not to add to their project.