XOBS Table Top Fan

Overview

Product CGI for the XOBS table-top fan. I modeled the fan in Blender, rendered it in Cycles and made two animated pieces, one landscape and one vertical, plus color studies, close-ups and clay renders.

The challenge

The fan pairs a warm wood drum with thin black wire and blades, and a wire grille is easy to lose against a background. The renders had to keep the grille and blades crisp while the wood grain read clearly from the front, side and back.

Approach

1. I modeled the drum housing with its side mounting knobs, the tubular legs, the five-blade fan and the spiral wire grille, plus the rear motor housing, its switch and the power cable.
2. The housing uses a lacquered wood material with long, banded grain. The metal parts stay satin black, so they hold their shape against light backdrops.
3. A palm-leaf shadow falls across the floor and walls in every frame and gives the plain sweeps some depth. I rendered the same front view on six backdrops: gray, blue, orange, violet, sand and pink.
4. Close-ups cover the rear motor housing and the grille hub with its single-character mark. Two clay renders show the model before materials.