Here’s a breakdown of the work I did with Matt DeMino in Ghostfire Gaming under his direction. I was petitioned to do 2 images for the trailer, but due to time I had to do only one. Regardless the art work from the other artists is amazing.
I already had an idea of what I wanted. The briefing was very clear and concise so taking advantage of the office I just put a couple of lights up and took a few reference pictures. I chose the first and last image and took some more references from other ones regarding light. The most challenging part regarding composition was already over and I just needed to draw and paint. So I took a well deserved time doing details.
I sketched on top very broadly and did my own designs of the environment and other features. I’ve come into the habit of using myself as a model for some of my images and I feel like it’s starting to become a bit noticeable so I tried transforming the face as much as I could without going to far away from the character I wanted to portray. So I mustached myself…
For filling up the color I straight up Photobashed the image I had and painted over it. I thought to myself that this image was somehow very “cheat-code”, but I had a timeframe and I wanted to do something I was also pretty happy with. So I cut corners wherever I could.
Particularly with the window. I became acquainted with the perspective filter in Photoshop, and through a video tutorial managed to place a photo of an old medieval window frame in the background with the perspective that my photo reference was giving me and that saved a ton of time that otherwise I knew I would have been spending trying to get that window right.
Thanks YouTube. At this point I’ll never ever spend $700 on an online class ever again… lol
Here below, I keep on painting this one image. The only difference between version 1 and 2 is the character and the item floating away. So I just try to concentrate on the first character first since he’s going to be my base for the second one.
Since this was going to be animated I need to make sure to separate layers. I, as anyone else, hate working in layers because I feel that you lose some unity that painting into a single layer always gives you. And yes, you always work in layers in Photoshop, but there’s an early stage where I just merge everything and keep doing copies over the same merged image with changes. that’s all.
Layers that I was required to separate where the character and the background, but I thought it would be useful to also separate the front table with the items and then later on the crystal too as separate layer.
I’m taking a lot of reference from the images I took, but there’s one Aliens scene that I referenced some ambient light from as well, and as always a little model of the previous version of the character to keep things in line.
more developement
moar
Of course never lose your sense of humor. Matt an I have known each other for a long while so in any other circumstances this would be kinda inappropriate… ?
Below is the semifinal composition.
Usually I get very cluttered with things to do in detail filled images like this one, so what I did was to take out a bunch of post-its and write on each of them the items I wanted and needed to render and finish. Once I finished that I shredded it (which feels mighty good) and then went for the next. Otherwise my ADHD gets the best of me and I would have never managed to finish anything at all.
There was a post-it for the “Books” in the background, another one called “Scrolls”, “Mouse”, “Skull”, “Foreground Book”, etc. Whenever I had my eye in a particular post it, it would help to not veer my attention to the next unfinished thing. And just concentrate on that particular object until finished. This made my work very fluid by the end.
If you suffer from being distracted all the time like myself and can’t seem to focus when you have a mess like this, post-its and many other tools will help you to have your attention leashed and controlled.
Here are the final images.
clicky on them… :0
Go check the trailer for the book as well!