Smoky CGI Sculptures Capture Physics-Defying Fluid Dynamics

Where there's smoke, there's fire—unless it's a CGI conjuring from this digital artist extraordinaire.

by Beckett Mufson

September 25, 2014, 5:25pm

Images via

Over the last month alone, we've watched CGI artist Lee Griggs' work advance at a lightning fast pace, accelerating from strange-yet-simple alien landscapes to uncanny, abstract human heads in a matter of days. His latest series, Fluids, finds Griggs returning to the realm of the abstract by digitally simulating Earth's least tactile substances: lightning, flames, smoke, and faux fluids.

Whether they're of stagnating colored pools or raging cumulonimbus clouds, Griggs' digital illustrations offer vivid explorations of fluid dynamics. Effortlessly alternating between imitations of reality and freeze-frames of impossible moments, his newest image series imagines a physics-defying realm of light and color. As with his recent psychedelic CGI masks, Griggs' usedArnold for Maya to create Fluids, a digital sculpture that offers the artist just the right amount of versatility needed for his rapidly evolving body of work.

Observe that smoky attention to detail in some examples of Griggs' Fluids below: