"I can't breathe"
With this challenge I wanted to reflect on the amazon peoples. Innocents among innocents, victims of a mute genocide which is going since the ‘50. For the second time in history after the conquistadores, they’re facing extinction, only for being guilty of living in the Amazonia, one of the richest places of land, wood, gold, and minerals worldwide. They're suffering immensely from the pandemic, but it all started many years back. While the world closed its eyes, they have been through mass killings, rapes, deportations, spread diseases as smallpox in ‘63. Now is it happening something similar.
The government led by Bolsonaro caused deforestation grown by 50%, and three quarter of the destroyed zones are in the indigenous protected areas. They’re destroying their home. At the same time several NGO and prestigious papers as Lancet are questioning whether the government is deliberately helping the covid19 spreading among indigenous to remove the last obstacle to Amazonian treasure. True or not, is a fact that government hasn't taken a single action to protect them.
They are dying twice faster than any other population worldwide. Manaus, Amazonas capital is the most hit city by covid19 in the world, is epicentre of the lethal Brazilian variant, people are crammed in mass graves. In the forest they have no hospitals, no medicines, no oxygen but the one that’s burning around them.
To them this work is dedicated.
Software and equipment used
3ds Max, Phoenix FD, Corona, Zbrush, Marv.Designer, Sub.Painter, Photoshop
05 February 2021
In the crying of every cut tree, every incinerated forest, and every burned land; in the dying voice of a guiltless murdered because of his skin in Minneapolis; among the 7 million of people which every year die by air pollution, a hidden holocaust; in the arctic wildlife's death rattle, disappearing because of global warming; in the silent screaming of millions of sea creatures, among fishes, birds, and mammals, strangled and poisoned by tons of plastics; in our own voices whenever we get back our trash in form of cancer; in the last breath of the indigenous of Amazon rainforest, literally decimated by covid19; and in the choked gurgling of all other victims of this pandemic, suffocated while struggling for oxygen;
you would hear a whisper: “I Can’t Breathe”,
from man and nature in unison.
We are one: I can’t breathe. We can’t breathe.
Not just white, black, or human, but All lives matter
05 February 2021
So I started collecting references for each of the pieces and built a basic scene with only landscape and lighting.
I used 3ds max for modeling, and forest pack to scatter the forest, trying to replicate the same layers of vegetation in terms of structure and plants. Thus I simulated the smoke with phoenix and tweaked its parameters to match a specific appereance and color. Created also the fire in phoenix, but just a little touch for volumetric light, since I knew I was going to edit both fire and smoke in photoshop later.
Then I started modeling pirogue and paddle, balancing the job between max, zbrush and substance painter. Final piece was the main and only character: I wanted him to be as close as possible to reality, then picked a specific tribe (yawalapiti), used daz for a first basic setup. I modeled accessories, earrings, hair in max+zbrush+marvelous, then posed him and started adding some muscular detail. Eventually I painted very basic textures and merged all these components togheter.
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