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The Evolution of Joey Camacho’s Conceptual 3D Art

This motion graphics designer makes a new piece of digital art every day. Here's a look back at his work in 2015.
Images courtesy of the artist 

In the past, motion graphics designer Joey Camacho wanted to practice making digital art, but waited for the perfect project to come along. He’d talk a lot about what he would like to do, but then never did it. By Camacho’s own admission, he was “full of shit for a long time,” waiting for things to happen, wanting them to happen. That changed in early 2014 with Progress Before Perfection, an initiative in which he would create a new digital art piece every single day in Cinema 4D.

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Almost two years later, Camacho’s Progress Before Perfection project is going strong on his Raw & Rendered Tumblr page. And this year’s imagery is just as experimental and dynamic as it’s been in the past. As he did the last time we caught up with him, Camacho selected some of his favorites—this time, in the series 300-365—and talked about the evolution of his technique.

“My most recent work, Year II, is a continued evolution on the first year. I’m continuing to practice more and more,” Camacho tells The Creators Project. “The recent work continues to be more explorative. In 2015, I invested in a second machine that adds more rendering power and speeds up the process. This frees up time to experiment before hitting the render button.”

Camacho says much of the new work was created between client projects. This resulted in some outside influence seeping into Progress Before Perfection.

“Techniques vary depending on where I’m located and what equipment I have available, but I use Cinema 4D in all of the images, with a focus on lighting and interesting textures,” Camacho says. “I use Octane Render, which is a fast GPU renderer, that allows me to view things nearly in real time, and get out iterations very quickly.”

“Referring to 300-365 specifically, I was using a lot of X-Particles (a Cinema 4D plugin) that is very powerful in terms of usability,” he adds. “It’s pretty simple to get interesting results, but I was focused on creating things that felt real and organic mainly—with a strong sense of environment and realistic textures.”

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Camacho says that his workload and travels in 2015 caused him to scramble a bit at late hours to complete the daily image, often after client work. In 2016, he intends to spend more time on the craft.

“I found myself, after the first year, saying yes to a lot of exciting projects, but watching my personal development suffer a bit,” he says. “Expect to see more motion design experiments and additional software included into the process. I also plan on capturing more assets, like HDRIs and textures, while travelling, so that I can enjoy and be inspired by my surroundings and still get the work done.”

And in the coming months, Camacho hopes to launch a new store that will showcase Year II’s work in the form of prints and books. In the meantime, click here to see more of his 2015 work.

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