Artist creates lifelike 3D images of great composers based on historical documents

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Would you like to see with your own eyes a living Mozart or a living Schumann? Or maybe you would not mind traveling back to the middle of the last century and seeing Marilyn Monroe with your own eyes? Not on the TV screen, but like this - alive. An artist named Hadi figured out how to do it. No, he did not invent a time machine. He simply recreates portraits and photographs of famous people in 3d - so skillfully that it seems that outstanding composers and actors from black and white cinema have really resurrected.

In his work, Hadi uses a variety of 3d-modeling programs - for example, zBrush and Maya. It is clear that he is not the first artist who is engaged in such creativity, but his works are distinguished by the fact that they have an incredibly high level of detail. His 3d renderings are extremely realistic and high quality, and many connoisseurs consider them to be masterpieces, noting that every recreation of him is in fact a work of art in itself.

Hadi doesn't just take the portrait and translate it into three-dimensional format, blindly trusting the artists. He conducts a whole research, studying historical documents and figuring out what outstanding people really looked like. The master explains that in most cases the paintings depicting great people are far from reality - they are embellished and flattering. While working on his chosen character, Hadi compares many versions of paintings and photographs before deciding which one he will try to redo. This is why his 3d renders look so realistic.

Hadi explains that he works in two directions, which require different approaches. The first category is portraits of celebrities. These are mainly actors - such as Will Smith, Marilyn Monroe, etc. Such images are quite simple, since everyone knows exactly how these people look or looked, and the artist can review dozens, if not hundreds of their photos and videos on the Internet …

The second category requires more painstaking work - this is the reconstruction of the faces of historical figures that we seem to know, but are not entirely sure that these people looked like that. Only death masks, lifetime masks, biographies or documentary descriptions of their appearance are available here. Without a doubt, the second type of work is much more difficult and requires more dedication and more serious research.

For example, Beethoven is often portrayed as a heroic person, and his portraits are more like images of a Greek god or military leader than a person who dedicated his life to music.

- To restore his face, I used his lifetime mask, as well as a bust, which was made by the same person who made this mask. But I did not use the composer's death mask, because it was in poor condition, - says Hadi, - As for Chopin, he was a very reserved person, and he has only two confirmed photographs. True, one of them is spoiled and it is difficult to make out anything on it, and the other was made at a time when the composer was seriously ill and his face looked swollen and disfigured. During Chopin's lifetime, a wide variety of artists painted, but their work was flattering. So all I could rely on was just his death mask.

The history of the reconstruction of the portrait of Brahms is also interesting.

- The middle of the 19th century was marked by the fact that at this time photography began to gain popularity throughout Europe, and people began to order paintings and masks during their lifetime less often. Fortunately, there are many pictures of Brahms on the Internet - even teenage ones. In my work, I tried to present him as thirty, says Hadi.

When Hadi was working on the portrait of Schumann, he was faced with the fact that all of his photos, which were taken in 1850, deteriorated and in terrible quality. Therefore, he tried to find several of his paintings made during his lifetime.

- It was funny that most of the pictorial portraits that I could find almost did not resemble the person depicted in these photographs (except perhaps just the hairstyle). This is another reason not to trust the paintings, says Hadi.

But Schubert was not famous during his lifetime and, probably, could not afford to order a portrait from a highly professional artist. Most of his portraits were taken decades after his death.

“All I could find as a source was just one photo of his mask. Unfortunately, this mask itself is lost or destroyed, says the contemporary artist.

Hadi explains that if we are talking about someone who is widely known in the modern world and whose quality photos are enough, the work to recreate a 3D image can take 3-4 weeks. But if we are talking about a person who lived hundreds of years ago, then such a job can take months.

The artist never plans in advance whose portrait he will recreate, but he receives a sea of orders from all over the world, and most often he is asked to portray the composers Mozart and Bach. So, as Hadi admits, in the near future he will probably deal with them.

By the way, not everyone knows the story of how Mozart made a fortune, and then managed to almost lose everything … And yet she is very interesting …