Daddy's Sandwich - Misako Sakamoto

Fact File Name Misako Sakamoto Product Vue 5 Infinite, Poser "The EcoSystems are really fantastic. With them, creating my scenes has become so much more enjoyable!"

Misako Sakamoto (or Mimi, as she’s known online) lives in Sapporo, Japan, with her two naughty cats. Her joyful character is clearly mirrored in her brightly lit, colorful Vue renders, depicting little moments of life or charming fairytale dreams.

A Rough Start – And a Happy Ending

Expression And Inspiration

"My first attempt at computer graphics was with a 2D program. But, as I had expected, it was quite a failure... However, I kept doodling with it and from time to time helped coloring my friend’s designs. One day he showed me some 3D pictures, and I got hooked up immediately. They were created with Shade, so I bought a copy a few days later and started playing with the program."

"About 5 years ago, I was looking around for a 3D program that could help me create backgrounds for my Shade scenes, discovered Vue d’Esprit 3, started learning it, and since then we live happily ever after! I like Vue’s ease of use, and I love playing with the node-based material editor (it reminds me of chemistry class). I also like its Poser export capabilities, and the editable plants. The EcoSystems are really fantastic. With them, creating my scenes has become so much more enjoyable!"

Shadows and Light

"I always have difficulties explaining the lighting in my scenes, because the settings vary quite a lot form one scene to the other."

"However, the way I plan the lighting is always the same. When I start a new scene, I try to figure out what the temperature would be in that scene, and set up the lighting parameters (color, brightness, softness) accordingly.
I also think that shadows play a big role. "Where should I keep it dark" is as important to me as "where should I add light". For instance, in "Daddy’s Sandwiches", you can see some shadows on the road and on the tree behind the girl. I intentionally put some trees outside the camera view to create the shadows there."

"Without those shadows, the scene would have been too bright and out of balance. Adding them makes the bright areas more pronounced and attracts the viewer to the sandwich delivery girl. "Daddy’s Sandwiches" took a week from concept to completion, and the hardest (but also most enjoyable) part for me was telling the story right. I used figures and objects from Poser, and used Photoshop for postwork (blur and color balance)."

Nature's Role

"I get my inspiration from everything around me: Books, people, music, nature and tons of digital art on the internet. But nature is my principal influence, I think. Nature is beautiful here in Japan, and I love watching the changes of seasons. The long winter has ended now, and spring is coming. I bet I won’t stop making bright spring scene for quite a while!"