MAC lipstick ad


Date: July 2025

Type: Personal Project

Tools: Blender & Premiere Pro

Role: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Animation, Compositing, Art Direction

Style: Branding concept

Project Breakdown


Overview

Summary: A speculative advertising project created to explore product visualization in a sleek, brand-driven style. The goal was to design a MAC lipstick render that could feel at home in a real campaign.

Inspiration: MAC’s minimal yet bold identity — glossy blacks, pops of color, and sleek packaging. Inspired by high-fashion beauty ads that combine product clarity with dramatic lighting.

Modeling & Texturing

The lipstick and cap were modeled in Blender with clean subdivision surfaces to achieve smooth geometry and precise proportions. For texturing, I focused on creating realistic materials: a glossy black casing with metallic accents, and a wax-based lipstick bullet with subtle subsurface scattering and specular highlights. Small imperfections were added to bring a touch of realism to the final look.

The scene was lit with a studio-inspired three-point setup, using a soft key light and rim light to define the silhouette, along with accent lights to emphasize glossy reflections. To bring the ad to life, I animated the lights so that subtle shifts in highlights and shadows created more movement and drama around the product.

lighting &
rendering

The ad was edited into a short format for Instagram, where it gained strong engagement. A major highlight was that MAC themselves noticed and liked the piece, validating its alignment with their brand aesthetic.

Hightlights