Down in Africa

The idea for this artwork came to me mainly as a way to utilize my latest acquisition, the Hivewire Lion. The Hivewire Lion was my prize for winning Honorable Mention in the “We Are All in This Together” contest over at HiveWire3D. After placing the lion in the scene, I just started adding other animals that one might see visiting a watering hole on the savannah like the elephants and giraffes. I wanted to add zebras and/or ostriches but I wasn’t able to. If you’re thinking “WTF are flamingos doing in there?”, flamingos are the most widespread bird in the world according to what I read while looking for more animals to add to my scene. Greater Flamingos like those in my scene actually can be found in the African Savannah in real life. The title for the piece comes from the song by Toto which I couldn’t remember the first half of the lyric only the “down in Africa” part. I have since looked it up and listened to it again. Oh, and the lion is yawning simply because I was a little sleepy/tired when I was posing him so that gave me the idea. LOL

The scene is lit with a single soft “sun” light and the sky dome. I rendered the scene in Superfly with a subtle depth of field effect mostly to hide the fact that the background models are of lower quality than my foreground models. Postwork was minimal with just some adjustment layers to enhance the colors and contrast.

Most of these items are available from the Renderosity Marketplace (unless otherwise noted):

• HiveWire Lion Family for the HiveWire Big Cat
• SBRM Flamingos by Ken Gilliland
• TruForm’s Savannah by TruForm