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Ben Willms – Coworker's Subaru [2024]
For this high-energy meme rap track about my former colleague's 2013 Impreza, I debated ad nauseum over how best to photograph her car for the utmost cool factor. However, I ultimately decided working entirely in CGI would give me the most ease and flexibility to do an exaggerated "pose".
I purchased an insanely high-poly .STL model of her correct model of Subie and painstakingly modified it in Blender to resemble the real deal. Final composite was done in Photoshop, with Lightroom CC used for the colour grade.
The single cover as seen in the final release. The vanity plate 10N1C is a Pixar-style Easter Egg reference to my previous release (see below). You can't see due to the motion blur, but the texture for the plate includes a registration sticker with my former coworker's birthday.
The original model was intended for printing...
...and was therefore completely untextured.
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Ben Willms – IONIC [2024]
Ionic is a bubblegum hip-pop track about taking the good with the bad, the negative with the positive, named after a very close friend with the surname Ion.
From the beginning I was keen on using the image of an atom to drive home this metaphor of an ion. I also knew that I would want to create a mesmerising animation out of this artwork for Spotify's Canvas feature.
As a result, I decided to work in 3D but employ cel shading + an orthographic viewpoint to give the illusion of a youthful 2D illustration. Pink is the theme because it's my special friend's favourite colour :)
The single cover as seen in the final release.
The looping animation as seen on Spotify Canvas and socials.
The entire image is a sneaky 3D render. Here's that illusion broken.
The view from Blender 4.0's viewport
Ben Willms – Best Friend [2023]
This looks like an edit or at least a composite image, but it's actually only a blue-tinted grayscale photograph. Completely in-camera! The subject is best friend Victoria viewing a jellyfish through evenly-lit glass at Ripley's Aquarium in Toronto, ON.
Ben Willms – Kickback [2023]
Kickback is a drift phonk-inspired rap that's chock full of pinball metaphors, including in its title. For the artwork, I photographed the kickback lane of a 1989 Williams Black Knight 2000 machine. Black Knight is a true classic with a great soundtrack of its own.
For this deliverable, I digitally removed the text on the orange lightning bolt that read "KICKBACK" – it was redundant and a little too front-and-centre for the design philosophy I wanted.
Ben Willms – Banana Milk (Song of the Summer) [2021]
I had a self-made model of a banana kicking around already just in time for the release of my unrelated song Banana Milk, a parody of the annual event of the Top 40 "song of the summer".
The sloshing milk is an old trick using metaballs, a 3D solid which smoothly merges into any nearby duplications of itself. A simple, cheap trick, but hey, if it ain't broke.
The sloshing milk is an old trick using metaballs, a 3D solid which smoothly merges into any nearby duplications of itself. A simple, cheap trick, but hey, if it ain't broke.
The finished artwork. Friend and fellow graphic designer BIDA suggested the Parental Advisory sticker spoof.
The ugly side of the virtual set.
Ben Willms – Purell [2020]
I wanted a cleaner-than-usual design (ironically) for my pandemic-themed COVID fundraiser track, with the goal being to drive Bandcamp sales. The hand sanitizer bottle is my own model. The air bubbles in the gel were achieved by means of Blender's particle system, and a few glass-textured low-poly spheres.
Staging and lighting took some time and involved some minor touchups in Photoshop and primarily Lightroom CC. It uses the same infinite cyclorama trick as Banana Milk above, but in a strategically lit matte black.
