Cover Stories: Rouleur issue 110 by Conspiracy Studio

Rouleur designer Enric Adell commissioned Conspiracy Studio, specialists in 3D designs and illustrations, to take the idea of the humble cobble stone and produce something suitably striking for our latest issue – devoted to the pavé races we love.

Enric guides us through the cover of issue 110, from conception to realisation.

"Conspiracy Studio had done previous renders of statues that I liked. These are my drawn sketches to show the idea from the cobble in its solid state to the broken version with the gold inside."

"First low-res renders to try the style of the fracturing. The shape of the cobble wasn't quite right yet, it needed to have more volume and weight, but we are getting closer. It contrasts the roughness of the stone with the prize inside – the gold."

"The shape and texture of the cobble is right and they added some more realism to the texturing. The breaking of the cobble was done through a software, not sculpted manually, so we did not have a 100% control on the shapes of the pieces. We saw many iterations but in some of them the cuts did not look very natural. The edges were too sharp and parallel."

"We finally went with this version that we found the most organic one, the one that look more like how a cobble of this type would actually break. You can see the low-res version, the high-res render and the final cover with the colours adjusted and the Rouleur logo in gold foil.

"Making this 3D model also allowed us to have a little animation as part of the process. The software programmes used by Conspiracy for the design were ZBrush, Cinema 4D and Redshift. We like the result. Hope you do too."