Steemfest! I spotted an update post by @roelandp a couple days ago. I've been so pre-occupied with my travels that I had forgotten when Steemfest was. After seeing a link to multiple competitions in the recent update post I was keen to get involved and get a chance at attending Steemfest 3. It would be ace to attend the event so I decided to dedicated some extra time to enter the competition by 
Growing up playing videos games and watching sci-fi I've always been a fan of the matte painting style concept art and of low-poly 3D graphics. I decided to use this competition as an excuse to dive in and start learning cinema 4d. I've had almost zero experience with 3d so to say it was a learning experience is an understatement.
After spending hours in photoshop on Saturday using a pack of brushed I found online I was pretty disheartened at my ability to do digital painting. Yesterday I downloaded the trial for Cinema 4d, cracked open youtube and went to work with a combination of tutorials and trial and error. I opted to create low-poly sci-fi inspired scene.
Not long after Steemfest 3 Neuralink announced their first product, a micro cognitive implant. With the invention of this new technology the bandwidth between interfacing with information is reduced to the latency of your internet connection. In the years following humanity experienced an unprecedented shift towards computational improvement. While many fought the idea humans took a path towards an integrated future with machines. The limitation of physical space was almost completely lost. "Humans" explore the world (and other worlds) through semi autonomous machines streaming data back to a physical body left in storage.
Steem is one of the many surviving blockchains technologies with banking and wealth becoming more about storing your value in ideas rather than in specific nation state controlled territories and institutions. By Steemfest 3000 the event is not hosted in a physical location or at least there is no distinction between the physical space and a virtual presence. Both human augmented intelligence and artificial intelligence gather in mixed reality to share experience and express ideas. Most minds represent themselves as pure light but often with a simple barrier as an homage to when personal space existed.
The gathering station is one of thousands. The SNDBOX presentation is starting in 87 milliseconds.
I created the initial 3D render in the trial version of Cinema 4D before exporting to Photoshop. I did my best to remove the watermark, added lens blur and extra overlays.
I hope you enjoyed my idea for the future Steemfest 3k, the competition was good reason for me to try something new but this is a perfect example of me trying to do do many things. I couldn't get the image in my head out onto the computer anywhere close to what I would have liked but I thought for a first attempt it worked quite well.
Here' some extra screenshots
It's a pretty steep learning curve opening up a 3D tool! I'm pretty keen to keep working on some low-poly skills. One of the hardest parts of this project was that I couldn't save my work. The trial version of Cinema4d can't save, working through tutorials I had to let the projects disappear. I only have these few screenshots to show for my learning experience. If anyone else has used Cinema 4d or wants to learn i'm keen to chat.
Looking forward to the second part of the competition. Thanks for hosting this contest