ISO 100 | 39mm | f 8.0 | 1/250 sec

I was startled awake by the chilling sensation of water filling my shoes.  Peering down, I discovered that a growing, swirling mass of murky liquid was gradually creeping up past my ankles.  Momentarily dazed, I tried to process what was happening.  This was the second time today that I had awakened to find something amiss.  The first time was this morning when I opened my eyes to find myself encased in a chamber of glass, centered in an empty room surrounded on all sides by concrete floor and brick walls.  Aside from my small cell and an air tube that extended from the brick wall through one of the glass panes of my crystal prison, my surroundings were bare and non-descript. 

Unsure of where I was, momentary fear had taken over me, but that fear was nothing compared to the terror that was rising within me now as I beheld the dense, churning fluid slowly filling my glass confinement.  It was then that I realized that the “air tube” I had noted earlier was in reality a pipe to the water main, a fact which brought clarity to my current situation and solidified in my mind the intentions of my unknown captors.

In desperation I began hurling myself at the walls of my prison, hoping against hope to force my way out of this human aquarium.  As the water crept up my legs, I rapidly glanced about me, looking for a hole, a crack, a vulnerability of any kind that might prove to be the key to my escape.  Finding nothing, I resorted to banging with my fists and shouting at the top of my lungs, but as the water level rose higher, it seemed that all my attempts at procuring deliverance were in vain.

At last the growing, swirly mass of cold, murky liquid had reached my neck.  Barely able to keep my head above the water, I desperately grasped at one final breath of air.  Filling my lungs for the last time, I closed my eyes as the chilling wave slowly washed over my head, leaving me suspended in my crystal cell, longing for the faintest ray of hope, certain that I had finally met my demise…

_______
Bit of a nightmare this week.  I was trying to depict what it feels like to find yourself stuck on a project, only to discover that you have a measly two days to deliver a final product.  Now, not only do you find yourself stuck in a cell of uncertainty and unanswerable questions, but now someone has turned on the tap, and your small cell is now filling with water.  No pressure, just figure it out, get it fixed, have it ready to deliver by the deadline or else!
This image was created almost entirely in Blender.  I knew there was no way I could create this scene in the real world, so I built my landscape using 3D models and textures from the real world, and then photographed myself using a similar lighting setup and incorporated myself into the final image.
This by far was one of the most challenging Blender projects I’ve ever worked on.  Probably what made it most challenging was working with the fluid simulator and the glass materials to get the best result without getting unwanted reflections, distortions, or light transmissions.  In the end, I had to render my scene 3 separate times with different lighting configurations to get all the elements I needed for my scene.  Once I had my 3 layers, I combined them all in Photoshop, did some color tweaking, added some extra water splashes and reflections on the glass, and did some other various retouches.
Anyways, hope this one doesn’t give you bad dreams this week.  It’s by no means an original image, but I had to experiment and find out if I could create my own version of this theme.  There are still a few things I would tweak, but all-in-all, I’m pretty pleased with the end result.
More to come…

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