"The  Process"

The  Concept

The concept was to have Coach Saban's practice hat surrounded by helmets representing Bama's six national championships in twelve seasons.  The left three from the BCS era and the right three from the CFP era.  #14 and #15 were and are back-to-back and hence, with artistic license, help create "Roll Tide Roll" via the neck bumpers.  The confetti and newspapers represent the postgame celebrations by fans and players.   Paying homage to another dynasty in Tuscaloosa, the 'TITLE' letters surrounding 'T-Town' have a houndstooth pattern to complete the composition.

3D  Models

I use Blender for my 3D digital artwork, it's free but so good it's used to create CGI ( computer generated imagery ) for tv and movies.  I get 3d models from Turbosquid.com, some meshes are used as is, like the helmets, and some have to be customized, like Saban's hat.  Some are created from scratch using Blender's modeling tools, like the confetti and newspapers.

Materials  &  Textures

Each part of a 3D model (the different colors above) is then assigned materials to look like plastic, metal, cloth, etc. along with other attributes such as color, transparency, roughness, specularity, etc.  Some areas of a model are mapped with 2D images to create textures, decals, helmet numbers, etc.  These materials and textures, along with lighting and camera settings, create the look and feel of real objects when rendered by Blender.

Render  &  Post Processing

Affinity Photo is used on Blender's rendered image to adjust coloring and manipulate highlights and shadows, etc. in certain areas.  On other layers my digital artist signature and starbursts are composited.  And for the finishing touches a description, the title, and my domain name are added to the bottom border.