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Description
Original Creation date: May 29, 2014

After more than three months of waiting for the artwork's publication at the Ipswich Art Gallery's CREATIVE GENERATION exhibition, it has finally hit the internet.

Dinner with the (former) Prodigal Son is a Source Filmmaker artwork, which I created for my high school art assignment, starting from the 13th of March this year, and finishing on the 29th of May. Such an artwork is considered groundbreaking due to my school's relative lack of technological orientation towards its subjects and the very fact it managed to be displayed at a state/region-wide art exhibition.

The concept for this artwork is a 'spiritual-sequel' to Golden-Age Dutch painter, Rembrandt Van Rijin's painting,The Return of the Prodigal Son (1667-69) . The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt is based on one of Jesus's parables from the Bible, which is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This particular parable tells the story of the younger of two sons, who after expending his father's inheritance on prostitutes; drugs; alcohol; and other sinful things, decides to come crawling back to his family in seek of self-vengeance for his sins. Only to be greeted with hospitality and forgiveness by his aging father, who cherishes and celebrates his return with a feast. However, most of his other family members beg to differ.

My artwork not only takes place after the events of Rembrandt's painting in relation to the parable's chronology but it also ditches the setting of Rembrandt's painting (Biblical Era or the actual Dutch Golden Age) in favour of a more modern, 1950s-60s setting. This is derived by the fact that I only used Team Fortress 2 assets, which centre-around that era but I was more than willing to embrace it. Additionally despite the fact that the artwork is meant to be a sequel to a Rembrandt painting concerning a different religious event/topic, you could say that the artwork also draws some inspiration from Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper" due to the fact that it takes place during a dinner scene with a similar perspective layout.

The reason why I decided to make my artwork, a 'spiritual-sequel' to Rembrandt's painting is that my high school art assignment was concerning the human condition of Love. Before me and the class were given assignments to create our own artworks (concerning the human condition of Love, of course); our teacher got us to write a newspaper article/essay about the human condition of love in historical artworks. One of the artworks she introduced us to and gave as an option to research was Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son, which conveyed unconditional love. I was particularly intrigued by its dramatic, expressive, and realistic use of lighting and as a person who wishes to learn such techniques; I decided that I wanted to replicate Rembrandt's style in one way or another in Source Filmmaker.

Initially, I wanted to make my artwork an actual painting based on an SFM image so I can learn how to paint realistic/detailed scenes, but time constraints and a lack of expertise in that field made it too unviable. Especially seeing how the teacher was happy to accept the SFM image itself for the assignment.

Once the rendering was finalised in SFM, it was off to Photoshop to add wine into the wine glasses for maximum visual impact.
No colour correction or additional post-processing was applied to the image due to potential fears of hindering the artwork's content and atmosphere instead of enhancing it.

Made almost entirely using Source Filmmaker, with minor usage of Photoshop.

Description
Original Creation date: May 29, 2014

After more than three months of waiting for the artwork's publication at the Ipswich Art Gallery's CREATIVE GENERATION exhibition, it has finally hit the internet.

Dinner with the (former) Prodigal Son is a Source Filmmaker artwork, which I created for my high school art assignment, starting from the 13th of March this year, and finishing on the 29th of May. Such an artwork is considered groundbreaking due to my school's relative lack of technological orientation towards its subjects and the very fact it managed to be displayed at a state/region-wide art exhibition.

The concept for this artwork is a 'spiritual-sequel' to Golden-Age Dutch painter, Rembrandt Van Rijin's painting,The Return of the Prodigal Son (1667-69) . The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt is based on one of Jesus's parables from the Bible, which is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This particular parable tells the story of the younger of two sons, who after expending his father's inheritance on prostitutes; drugs; alcohol; and other sinful things, decides to come crawling back to his family in seek of self-vengeance for his sins. Only to be greeted with hospitality and forgiveness by his aging father, who cherishes and celebrates his return with a feast. However, most of his other family members beg to differ.

My artwork not only takes place after the events of Rembrandt's painting in relation to the parable's chronology but it also ditches the setting of Rembrandt's painting (Biblical Era or the actual Dutch Golden Age) in favour of a more modern, 1950s-60s setting. This is derived by the fact that I only used Team Fortress 2 assets, which centre-around that era but I was more than willing to embrace it. Additionally despite the fact that the artwork is meant to be a sequel to a Rembrandt painting concerning a different religious event/topic, you could say that the artwork also draws some inspiration from Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper" due to the fact that it takes place during a dinner scene with a similar perspective layout.

The reason why I decided to make my artwork, a 'spiritual-sequel' to Rembrandt's painting is that my high school art assignment was concerning the human condition of Love. Before me and the class were given assignments to create our own artworks (concerning the human condition of Love, of course); our teacher got us to write a newspaper article/essay about the human condition of love in historical artworks. One of the artworks she introduced us to and gave as an option to research was Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son, which conveyed unconditional love. I was particularly intrigued by its dramatic, expressive, and realistic use of lighting and as a person who wishes to learn such techniques; I decided that I wanted to replicate Rembrandt's style in one way or another in Source Filmmaker.

Initially, I wanted to make my artwork an actual painting based on an SFM image so I can learn how to paint realistic/detailed scenes, but time constraints and a lack of expertise in that field made it too unviable. Especially seeing how the teacher was happy to accept the SFM image itself for the assignment.

Once the rendering was finalised in SFM, it was off to Photoshop to add wine into the wine glasses for maximum visual impact.
No colour correction or additional post-processing was applied to the image due to potential fears of hindering the artwork's content and atmosphere instead of enhancing it.

Made almost entirely using Source Filmmaker, with minor usage of Photoshop.