TIME100 AI 2025

Here's a great commission for Time Magazine and their annual TIME 100 AI 2025 list of the most influential people working in Artificial Intelligence. The loose brief was to create an image that was interesting and abstract and conveyed the concept of AI without being too obvious. The design director Chelsea Kardokus had referred to some of my 3d work in the past, such as the Secret 7" chrome swan and the BBC Science Focus Dark Universe cover, so it was a no-brainer to turn to Cinema 4d to begin creating this piece.

My first ideas revolved around the notion of a cybernetic flower of some sort with metal thorns to convey the notion of a flourishing technology with potentially very prickly elements to it. I really enjoyed modelling the flower and experimenting with textures and lighting but soon decided to move on to another train of thought. The image of a spherical egg-like object came to mind with an all-seeing eye, suggestive of the birth of a powerful new technology possibly, so I modelled and rendered that to present with my other concepts, some of which are shown here. The cyber-egg won the day so I developed that further in Cinema 4d with a ripple effect beneath, catching some interesting reflections, and took the renders into Photoshop to refine the eye with its luminous data-strewn field of view.

I've included here a Cinema 4d render of the basic model and an alternative version with subtly different lighting and textures. A really satisfying and enjoyable job and it's a real pleasure to see it across the Time website and print edition so many thanks to Chelsea for taking a chance on me. You can see this on the website here also.