Trip To The Titanic

Here's an enjoyable commission for Reader's Digest and a great piece by sitcom writer Mike Reiss. It's a humorous and bittersweet look at his experiences in the infamous Titan sub a year before it's fateful last trip to view the Titanic wreckage entitled My (Reluctant) Trip to the Titanic. The brief required an opening spread illustration setting the scene with the sub and Titanic and two collages depicting details and photos from the story. I turned to Cinema 4d to create the opener and sourced a good 3d model of the Titan sub to use throughout, the porthole proved a useful feature to connect the collage images. For the Titanic wreckage I looked at reference imagery and modelled a rudimentary front portion of the doomed ship with distressed textures and lighting to add depth then further Photoshop tinkering for final compositing with the Titan sub. For the collages I adapted some of Mike's photography with other elements to capture some of the humorous tone of the piece. I've posted here an alternate opening illustration of the Titan exploring the bow and development of the 3d model Titanic wreckage. Overall, a great job to work on and big thanks to Jessie A. Sharon for taking me on for this. You can see them on the main site here also.