The Heart Of The Matter

Well, I've been asked to 3D up a banner for a friends blog. The banner is to based on the art for her book "Craving". The book's a totally awesome dark fantasy novel, so the art has to be sort of gothic but without being overly macabre or too gruesome, so as to appeal to the more squeamish of the genres clientele as well as those hardened Steven King aficionados who are holidaying in paranormal romance land for awhile!!

Anyway, the concept for this is a locked heart, and this is what I've got so far.

I've tried to keep the shapes simple, the heart's shape for example, is more symbol then anything that would inhabit the human body, and I've been testing out textures to try and make it feel more like something that is living tissue... and hopefully hitting gothic rather then gory! For those of you more interested in the techie side, I'm using my beloved Cinema 4D and each of the textures I've used have a bump map, expect the lock itself which has displacement instead as it just wasn't looking authentic enough without.

Its only a work in progress but still I thought I'd share! If you would like to learn more about Craving then check out the blog here ... http://theredpenofdoom.wordpress.com/