Live Free Or Die | Hybrid Photography & CGI | Dale May
LIVE FREE OR DIE
Services: Concept Development, Art Direction, Studio Photography, Photorealistic CGI Environment Creation, Compositing & Post-Production | 2024
"Live Free Or Die" is a two-image hybrid photography and CGI personal project created by Dale May in 2024, featuring actor Alexander Patsos as a fearless biker and his trusty rescued piglet sidekick Hamlet. Both images were built by compositing studio photography of Alexander into fully photorealistic CGI environments rendered in Blender 3D, alongside a custom-built chopper that doesn't exist in the real world and a piglet who absolutely steals every scene he's in.
THE CONCEPT
Theirs is an epic journey of kickassery and adorableness.
This project began with an AI brainstorming session. I was experimenting with AI-generated imagery to explore concepts, and one of the outputs was a vintage chopper with a hipster biker riding through the desert. The character the AI generated looked remarkably like my friend and actor Alexander Patsos. That was all the sign I needed.
I knew immediately this had to be a two-image series. The first shot would be the hero image: Alex and his sidekick riding through the desert, ready to fight crime or stop for ice cream, whichever came first. The second would be the intimate counterpart: the two of them in a garage, bike getting tuned up, a quiet moment between a man and his pig before the next adventure.
Every great road warrior needs a sidekick. BJ and the Bear (1979) understood it best. A man, a vehicle, and an animal companion who provides both comic relief and genuine emotional weight. I already had the perfect piglet model from VFXGrace in my asset library. I named him Hamlet, created a tiny custom AC/DC t-shirt for him, and the partnership was sealed.
THE CHALLENGE
The central challenge was building a motorcycle that doesn't exist. The vintage chopper with sidecar I had envisioned wasn't available as a single 3D model anywhere, so I combined two separate models, one chopper and one motorcycle sidecar, into a single cohesive vehicle. I retextured and weathered to read as one piece. Getting the proportions right and the materials consistent across two different source models required significant customization work but much quicker than building from the ground up.
The bigger challenge was making Alexander look like he was actually riding it. A real sound stage production would solve this with a full-scale mock-up, multiple overhead china lanterns for soft ambient daylight, and a crew to manage it all. Working in my home studio meant solving the same problem with considerably less infrastructure.
To get Alexander's body position exactly right, I brought the real-world scale motorcycle model into Blender and precisely mapped out the height and distance of the seat, foot pegs, and handlebars. I then recreated each one in the physical studio using C-stands, apple boxes, and floor pegs, each measured to the exact millimeter to match the CGI bike. If his body position in the studio matched the geometry of the 3D model, and the position and size of my camera lens matched the 3D lens, the composite would be invisible. It was.
BTS: Alexander Patsos on set in the studio, riding apple boxes and C-stands rigged to match the CGI bike geometry.
THE APPROACH
For lighting, I used a warm edge light to simulate the desert sun and bounced a single diffused light off my white vaulted ceiling to create a soft ambient daylight feel across the subject. The ceiling bounce gave me the same quality of light you'd get from multiple overhead china lanterns on a large stage, just with one light and one room. Simple solutions, invisible results.
Alexander's wardrobe came from a combination of what he already owned and an affordable leather vest I sourced on Amazon. That's the hybrid advantage applied to production design as much as to CGI: you solve the problem in front of you with whatever gets you closest to the image in your head, then the environment, the lighting, and the compositing close the gap.
For the desert scene, I placed Alex and Hamlet on the open road, Hamlet riding shotgun in the sidecar in his AC/DC shirt, wind in his ears, ready for whatever came next. For the garage, I pulled from my extensive 3D asset library and built out the space with period-appropriate detail: vintage tools, oil stains, worn surfaces. I created several custom enamel wall signs including one that reads "Beware of the Pig." A vintage boom box went in because Alex and I are both musicians and no self-respecting garage is silent. I added a Pabst Blue Ribbon can on the work table. Although I've been sober since 2004, Pabst was my favorite beer ever since the first time I saw David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Dennis Hopper became my favorite male actor as well, and he was in Easy Rider, which was another inspiration for this shoot — full circle stop. The scene is backlit, intimate, a quiet moment between a man and his pig who is eyeing the bike like he's already thinking about the next ride.
Hamlet himself required little customization. VFXGrace are top-tier animal model creators and their piglet is flawless out of the box. The subsurface scattering was dialed in to make his adorable ears glow with the setting sun. Having a great asset allowed me to spend more time posing the pig to give it personality. Some assets you improve. Some are ready to rock.
Scene 1 — Desert Ride: CGI Build to Final Composite
Scene 2 — The Garage: CGI Build to Final Composite
THE RESULT
"Live Free Or Die" won two international awards: a Silver Award at the International Photography Awards 2024 in the Digitally Enhanced category, and a 1st Place Gold Award at the Best Photography Awards in the Advertising category. The project was part of the body of work that contributed to Dale May's selection for Lürzer's Archive 200 Best Digital Artists.
Two images. One studio. No location. No sound stage. No production crew. Just a photographer, an actor, a CGI pig in an AC/DC shirt, and a chopper that only exists in Blender.
Scene 2 — The Garage
CREDITS
Photography, CGI, Art Direction & Post-Production: Dale May
Agent: WSWcreative
Actor: Alexander Patsos | IMDb
Hamlet the Piglet: VFXGrace 3D Model
See more work like this
For press inquiries about this project, contact Sarah Hall Productions: info@shpny.com | 212.529.1598
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