Discover the creative process behind the dystopian surrealist artwork ‘Agony’ with Nguyen Bao.
INTRODUCTION
Hey there! I’m Nguyen Bao, a 3D Visual Artist based in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.
I’ve been a 3D Visual Artist for three years. I love creating and experimenting with visual art, expressing myself, and exploring the unconscious mind through 3D art. My work is influenced by various styles such as futurism, surrealism, dystopia, utopia, and grotesque.
INSPIRATION
My inspiration mainly comes from movies, art, or anything related to futurism, surrealism, and dystopia. I’ve always been a huge fan of surreal artists like Zdzisław Beksiński, Mariusz Lewandowski, Peter Gric, and H.R. Giger. That kind of art makes it hard for me to look away.
For this particular piece, I wanted to give it a nightmarish atmosphere—something beautifully dark. I’m combining a woman with an organic surrounding as she’s slowly being devoured by it. It was titled Agony to evoke a more disturbing feeling.
PROCESS
PC Specs:
- MSI Z790
- i7-14700k
- 128GB RAM
- ProArt RTX 4060ti 16GB
Software:
- Blender
- ZBrush
- DAZ Studio
- PureRef
- GoB (Addon)
References:
Collecting references is the most important step before you start creating anything. I used PureRef here, the most convenient and efficient software for managing references. As I already mentioned, I wanted to merge a woman with an organic surrounding, so I started looking up the works of the mentioned artists (Zdzisław Beksiński, Mariusz Lewandowski, Peter Gric, H.R. Giger, etc.) as well as other artists’ works, as long as they were related to dystopia and surrealism.
Blockout:
After collecting enough references, I started to block out the basic shape of everything before bringing it into ZBrush to start sculpting.
During the blockout stage, I used Bezier curves and sphere objects, then manually adjusted their shape with proportional editing in Edit Mode. You can also use the Grab brush in Sculpt Mode—whatever works best for you.
For the ground, I used the built-in addon A.N.T: Landscape and experimented with Noise Type and Effect Type, adjusting them with proportional editing if needed to achieve the desired result.
After spending a while on the blockout stage and composition, everything looked like this with a base Genesis 8.1 Female model from DAZ.
I used a 20mm lens camera for this scene.
Sculpting:
After the blockout stage, I exported everything to ZBrush using the GoB addon, which allows you to transfer objects between Blender and ZBrush with a single click. (I already provided the link to the addon above, so you can check it out.)
Example how the addon GoB works:
After finishing the sculpting, I transferred everything back to Blender. They were all high-poly models, but there was no need to optimize them since nothing needed to be rigged or animated—the final result was just a still image.
Texturing:
Nothing complicated at all—just a PBR bone texture from ArtStation with box projection and SSS (Weight: 1, Radius: 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, Scale: 0.5).
I used Pointiness with a Color Ramp to create the desired detail mask and increased the base color value to 3 using the Hue/Saturation node to enhance the sculpted details.
Then I added AO.
Final look (before/after the mask and AO added)
Node tree:
Lighting:
I added some large area lights for the whole scene, plus two more spotlights for the main object and a principled volume cube.
Here is how the lights affect the scene.
Added some more smoke VDBs to create a bit more depth:
Compositing:
I created a group node using Add and Screen blending modes with some curve adjustments to refine the look. The rest was used to slightly increase overall saturation and add a vignette effect.
Before and after.
That’s how powerful the compositing is!
After the render finished, I just added a bit more color grading and noise!
RENDER: Agony
Thank you for reading! Please check out my social media if you want to see more of my work!
About the Artist
Nguyen Bao (@lame.ostrich), a 3D artist from Ho Chi Minh, works at GudLag Creative and SQUR.CRE. His art blends futurism, surrealism, dystopia, utopia, and grotesque elements, fusing dreams and reality.
