FUTURE
and experts 3D World gathers artists the synthwave to discuss the rise of can create aesthetic and how you your own neon masterpieces
Also known as outrun and retrowave, synthwave is first and foremost a style of electronic music, heavily indebted to the electro-synth sounds of the 1980s. As the genre rose to prominence throughout the 2000s, achieving more mainstream success in the 2010s with cultural touchstones like Drive and Stranger Things, it became associated with a particular visual style. This visual style is similarly indebted to the 1980s, with purple and magenta neon, chrome, gridlines, and VHS effects, to name just a few of its recognisable tropes. It’s a style familiar to any artist working today and after more than a decade, its popularity doesn’t appear to be fading. 3D World felt the time was right to get the inside track on this popular style. Where did it come from? What is its lasting appeal? How can 3D artists create their own neon-soaked vistas? We have assembled the experts to answer all these questions and more.
A RETRO SOUNDTRACK
There are few individuals more qualified to help 3D World understand the synthwave movement and its visual stylings than Ashley Keegan. Also known as Synthronicity, Keegan is the owner and creative director of Forged In Neon, an online platform for all things synthwave, as well as A&R for London-based independent record label TW1 Records. These days she is held in high esteem by a roster of synthwave’s best and brightest musicians.
An early infatuation with television shows like Miami Vice, Knight Rider and Airwolf, along with their quintessentially 80s soundtracks, began Keegan’s obsession with synthwave. “I always had an innate love for the synthesiser as far back as I can remember,” she tells 3D World, “even down to getting my first Yamaha keyboard when I was about seven years old. I practised for hours trying to replicate the themes to Miami Vice, Knight Rider or Airwolf. Whether it was the Street Hawk theme track by Tangerine Dream or The Transformers: The Movie’s by the legendary Vince Dicola, I was transfixed.”
In later years the neon glow of 80s electronica was replaced with the strobe lighting of the rave scene, but Keegan always yearned for the synth sounds of old to return. “I’d often lamented the loss of this scene and still listened to acts like Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode and Gary Numan until a surprising evolution began to emerge. Unbeknownst to me there was a movement bubbling under the surface, there were lots more people like me out there who craved to replicate the sounds of a by-gone age,” recalls Keegan.
“As far back as 2008, you had artists in the shadows publishing finished tracks on Myspace who retrospectively started the genre we now know as synthwave,” she explains. “Flash forward to 2011 and the seminal movie for most in their journey was Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn. The pulsating soundtrack drew me in from the start and took me back to those feelings I felt sitting in front of my
TV waiting on my favourite bands on Top Of The Pops or creating a mixtape of all my favourite tracks from the radio.”
Although its origins are in sonic soundscapes, visual art is a key strand in synthwave’s DNA. “The visual look and aesthetics of synthwave are of monumental importance in its overall presentation,” adds Keegan. “It’s by its very nature 80s centric with lashings of retro-futurism styling. Dark scenes with neon-coloured grids and sunsets with palm trees are hugely common. More often than not if a single or album release has amazing cover art it will be the one most coveted, especially if there aren’t many records pressed.”
Sports cars are another common trope of the synthwave aesthetic, with artists often drawing on the kinds of sleek 80s designs rarely seen today – “think Back To The Future and its Delorean DMC 12, or Miami Vice and their white Ferrari Testarossa,” adds Keegan. “Visuals from the genre often cross over into the mainstream which leaves the purists cold, such as Stranger Things and the Black Mirror episode ‘San Junipero’, but I for one embrace it.”
NEON NIGHTS
Synthwave and its retro sensibilities have become an everpresent style in 3D art, with artists adopting elements of it to create all kinds of atmospheric imagery, just like freelance digital artist Alen Gajšek. “In the beginning, I had no actual plan of the style I wanted to go for,” he tells 3D World. “I was just doing whatever I felt like
on the day. After a few months of exploring styles, I found out about retrowave. It was all about neon and good music. I fell in love with it instantly.”
Gajšek learnt more about the retrowave movement by looking at the work of other artists, reading articles, watching films, even producing his own synthwave music. “After a while I made different styles and compiled them in one big image to do a comparison,” he explains. “I immediately saw that the neon style stood out the most. From that moment I started to focus more and more on this style.”
The process behind these stylish images begins with Gajšek gathering reference images that will help him realise his vision. “I like to focus on composition, lighting and texturing. This means I help myself with different 3D model packs. I create my compositions in Cinema 4D with Octane Render,” he adds. After creating a layout and composition with basic models, Gajšek begins texturing. Adding the neon glow is the last piece of the puzzle, and with the render complete he uses the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop, playing around with post-production settings to make the colours stand out.
Gajšek recommends having a plan if you want to create your own similarly stylised art: “Before you start, make a goal of what you want to achieve. Start by finding references and inspecting light sources. When I started I tried to replicate street photography at night to understand the lighting. When working on an image I help myself by dividing it on a 4x4 grid. I ask myself in what parts the image is lacking light sources or reflective surfaces. I repeat this a few times until I feel all the grid squares are equally distributed with emissions or reflections.”
Lighting is a crucial element in the synthwave aesthetic, and Gajšek’s work is no different. “When I’m creating this type of image I look for two things, elements that will emit light and surfaces that will reflect it,” he says, “I try to find the right balance
between emission and reflection. Most of the textures I create in this style are metal-based, to catch all the nice reflections. Glass and water are two other reflection materials that I will use a lot. I also make sure to create worn metal to get even more detail. Also, don’t forget about adding glow in post-production, which is one of the main ingredients.”
With many of Gajšek’s images set at night, using these visible light sources can pose a challenge. “If there is one main object I will always add some non-visible lights to light it up with thematic colours,” he explains. “I also add invisible lights in front of reflective surfaces or smaller objects if the visible lights are not enough. My aim is to fill the whole image with emissions or reflections.”
CYBERSPACE
Leopoldo D’angelo, known to those in the 3D art community as Dangiuz, is an Italian visual artist, art director and graphic designer. Spanning cover art, animation, commercial graphics and more, Dangiuz’s distinctive cyberpunk and synthwave art has been featured by the likes of Behance, NVIDIA and Maxon. “I think my art style falls into the ‘cyberpunk’ category,” he explains to 3D World, “it’s a subculture of the sci-fi genre.”
The distinctive style of Dangiuz’s art was shaped by his love of particular art cultures and his desire to replicate them. “I didn’t really look for it to happen, I just tried to recreate what I liked most,” he says. Some examples of Dangiuz’s influences include Blade Runner and its sequel Blade Runner 2049, Akira, Ghost In The Shell, Ready Player One, Altered Carbon, and George Orwell’s 1984.
Although his workflow varies from render to render, Dangiuz does have a particular approach to getting his creative juices flowing. “Unless I already have an idea in mind, I open my references and saved posts folders and look for something to recreate, or just seek inspiration,” he explains. “It
doesn’t necessarily happen, but I feel more motivated. Then I look in my old project folders in case I already have a similar project to what I would like to make, if I do I duplicate it in order to have a solid base to begin with.”
From here Dangiuz will work on and experiment with the image. “If there’s something I would like to do but I don’t know how to, I either google it and learn it, or I try to do it by myself,” he explains. “I prefer googling though, because learning to do new things is really important.” Dangiuz’s workflow often has one of two possible outcomes, either the process goes smoothly with an immensely satisfying end result, or it takes a lot longer than expected, with Dangiuz then deleting the project out of frustration. “I have often deleted projects that I’ve spent several days on, just because I felt I was at a dead end,” he admits.
“The next day I start over, with a new idea, a new reference, a new mindset, ready to produce something cool.”
To light his stylish imagery, Dangiuz simply uses standard lighting techniques that anyone can learn by studying light and photography. “I also often find myself creating some very small dotted maps and then cloning or scattering them here and there,” he adds. This process helps to create some of the eye-catching effects seen throughout Dangiuz’s work.
As with much 3D art that depicts cyberpunk characters or cityscapes, there is a compelling sense of story in Dangiuz’s work, something he attributes to the genre being so meaningful. One look at a piece of cyberpunk imagery will communicate themes of technology, dystopian subcultures, and an oppressively capitalist society. “Seeing these buildings with big corporate logos on them always conveys a crucial dystopian message,” Dangiuz continues. “Sometimes I give my art a strong message and direction, but I love to see people commenting their own ideas or interpretations because it makes me see things from a different perspective.”
A UNIQUE STYLE
Born in the small town of Senyera in Spain, Adrián Rojas, also known as Dante Vinci, started out studying photography before realising it wasn’t for him and opting to teach himself 3D art instead. “Even though I was good at it, I wasn’t enjoying it because I was limited to reality,” says Rojas of his time as a photographer. Artists like Beeple and Rafa Grassetti inspired his early forays into 3D, and after playing around with photo montages, he started using Youtube and Domestika courses to master software like Cinema 4D and Zbrush. “These helped me a lot, but in the end what determined that my art would improve were the hours of practice,” he adds.
Like many of his peers, Rojas’s synthwave and cyberpunk style developed on its own. “Each artist does things their own way,” he explains, “even if two artists do the same work it will never be
the same. That’s the beautiful thing about art.” His artistic influences stretch from other creators to 2D and films, which Rojas calls “an inexhaustible source of the best references.”
“The difficult thing is to have ideas that your skills can capture,” Rojas adds. The concepts for Rojas’s arresting imagery often come from the work of fellow artists or new trailers and video game cinematics. “Other times you can copy work as practice,” he continues. “I realise that I still have a lot of work to do to become a big player in the industry, so much of the time it’s better to focus on the technique and forget about creativity. For me it is an honour to use their work; I do not intend to profit from them.”
Rojas captures his initial ideas or concepts in the form of a drawing, before beginning to shape them in Zbrush. Rendering takes place in Keyshot, where he uses his experience as a photographer to light and composite. The final step is to then retouch the image in Photoshop. “There are times when it doesn’t need much retouching, then there are images where most of the work is in this last step,” he explains.
“SOMETIMES I GIVE MY ART A STRONG MESSAGE AND DIRECTION, BUT I LOVE TO SEE PEOPLE COMMENTING THEIR OWN IDEAS OR INTERPRETATIONS”
Leopoldo D’angelo (Dangiuz), visual artist
Ultimately Rojas recognises that part of being a great 3D artist is playing to your strengths: “The weakest part for me is the texturing and rendering. Because they’re the more technical processes I’m lazy about learning them. It’s not something that worries me, because in the future I’d like to work as a character designer and in that profession those points are not the most important.”
Most of the challenges Rojas faces when creating his stylish pieces arise from those techniques he has yet to master. Sculpting clothing, hair or certain parts of the human anatomy, like lips and hands, can often prove difficult, but Rojas knows they will come out right eventually. “If part of your image is not modelled well enough, it is because you haven’t spent enough hours on it,” he laughs.
Turn the page for a step-by-step tutorial from Adrián Rojas as he demonstrates the workflow process for one of his impressive renders.