In this series, we’ll look deeper into some of the projects on Behance.net that were especially admired in our community. This time, we spoke with Julien Palast, a photographer in Paris. His “SKINDEEP” offered a unique, eye-catching rendition of humans as sculptures. Take a deeper look into his process below.

What was your inspiration for this project?
I wanted to create instant bas-relief (a type of sculpture) with live bodies, like ephemeral sculptures of the human form. i got inspired by the scenes you can find in the front of churches or antique monuments.

Can you describe your process in creating this project?
I wanted to retain the sculptural form of the body without the personal identity of a model. I tried with body painting in the past, but it is a very long process that always needs a lot of on-stage and post-production retouching. So I was searching for a technique that would avoid all this. I started by experimenting with different materials and techniques. I did several trials before coming up with the right technique. it got improved during the photoshoots, and is still improving!

Did you expect it to be as popular as it’s been on The Behance Network?
No, i wasn’t expecting it to be so popular, I was happy with the outcome but I was very happy to see that so many people appreciated it.

Did you go through many versions and iterations before coming up with these final pieces?
I did a first version of the SkinDeep project in 2010, but the material was not the same and the outcome was more abstract, less accurate, which was nice too but I wanted to explore a different side for this second version. In between these two series, I tried out with several different materials and techniques before finding the one that I found more suitable.

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In this series, we’ll look deeper into some of the projects on Behance.net that were especially admired in our community. This time, we spoke with Tim Tadder, a photographer and visual communicator in Los Angeles. His epic Water Wigs project got a staggering 740,000 views, was featured on Reddit, and practically became a meme in the 2 months since it’s been posted. We must admit, we’ve been dying to know how these were accomplished – Tadder divulges his inspiration and process below. 

What was your inspiration for this project?
I had seen the show Time Warp (a slow-motion piece showing a water balloon hitting face) – and thought we could do a similar thing with photography. I wanted to do it with portraits – as you will see from Time Warp, they’re throwing water at a face, which was something I really didn’t want to do.  Also, I had seen a project on Behance where someone had thrown a balloon at a person’s face, and it didn’t have the jump I was looking for.

I wanted to create a still face amidst this explosion of energy. We then began exploring the idea with a mannequin in our studio, and found that when we threw the balloons straight down, it created a hair-like effect. We then figured bald men would make the perfect subjects to really show the effect of the water and the wig/hat like shapes really created an arresting comical image.

Can you describe your process in creating this project?
This is pretty intense, and I do not recommend it to people that are not experienced working with water and electricity! We had to use lots of power to freeze the water, and there was quite a bit of mess. I’d rather skip the details and just say I learned about how to do it online from people shooting exploding balloons, I then modified it to shoot people. It just expanded the scale and the size of the mess.

Did you expect it to be as popular as it’s been on Behance?
Not at all. We have been doing lots of personal projects this year to expand our offering and break out of a style we are know for. We did the future sports project, the Fish Heads, a boxing project, (some others that were epic fails) and then this project. Each one seemed to be better than the previous execution. I think with this one its really something totally different.

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