Concept art
Brief
Initial ideas
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Building my world.
You are a well experienced and skilled explorer who has a travelled through some of the most dangerous landscapes and environments know to man, you have faced your fair share of troubles in that time however this time you are in a Scandinavian forest and this time it's different you have a feeling that won't stop bugging you and it draws you further and further into the the tall trees and thick shrubbery. As you draw closer and closer you hear chants of an inaudible dialect. As you pull a bush back you can see a huge circular slab with Nordic runes each one a different colour, their purpose is unknown and as you look around the slab you see torches on fire however this is no ordinary fire like the runes they glow a different colour. Your eyes then begin to wander and You look downward and see the aged mossy stone covered in a thick gray mist that enshrouds everything it falls upon and within it you see people on their knees wearing what seems to be a some form of ceremonial outfits in the fog at the base of the slab and then a light begins to emanate from the slabs location and what seems to be a tear in space begins to form from it and a hand begins to reach through it.
Mood boards.
For the environment mood board I looked at Scandinavian forests to draw inspiration from and i found that i really liked the tall trees that they have it lends a sense of atmosphere that I think would really work for my piece of concept art. Also after looking at the snowy versions of the forest I think I'll make my environment have a layer of snow as I think that will help create layers and depth to my scene especially if I use the dawn god rays for some lighting. I also looked at stone slabs and I like the look of the ancient stone with engravings etched and I think carved in runes would look really nice in that style.
To start I looked at different Nordic runes that i could possibly put on the stone, i also done research to there meaning I might actually choose runes that are relevant to the scene for world building. Tears in space time were another thing I looked at as this is what the hand is emerging from and that will probably be the focal point of the piece so I might have blue rays emanating from the edges of the tear with a space pattern behind it. Whilst searching for people to use as inspiration for the cult followers, I changed it to skeletons as I think help contribute to the ancient magic aesthetic that I am trying to achieve, I may also play round with giving them cloaks to make them more mystical and ominous.
Blocking.
I opened up blender and imported a basic rig in a T-pose that i got from mixamo then i imported it into blender so that i can figure out what composition i would like for my piece of concept art so to start i tried with a low angle shot looking at the huge stone slab with some cult members worshipping at its base and i used the centre members arms to frame the top middle of the slab where the hand is emerging from a displaced object. I rendered it out then imported it into photoshop and traced over the image and then added detail to things like the skeletons. Once i had the core drawing blocked out i lowered it so that the focus would be in the centre of the image so that it followed the rule of thirds to make a much better composition.
Adding details
After i figured out my composition i wanted to start adding in details to bring the image to life so first i went back into blender to and modelled a torch that i could then put into my scene, with the torches in the scene i used a gradient layer and silhouette fire image to create a clipping mask to used the orange/yellow layer to texture it. For the glow i blended yellow and orange and then set the layer that they were on to screen so that i would get that really nice glow effect. To make the back ground somewhat interesting i decided a mountain would fill out that space nicely so in blender i used the land scape generator to create a mountain mesh that i can trace over in photoshop to colour the mountain mesh in photoshop i used a gradient layer going from a lighter grey value at the base to a darker value at the top to create a sense of scale for mountain. I used the same method to add atmosphere to my scene and to make the mountain appear further in the back. i duplicated the atmosphere layer and put it over the mountain layer and then lowered the opacity as the further something is the more washed out and less vibrant the colours will be so i was trying to mimic that effect. Using my mood board as reference i looked at the rune images and made 4 of them using a softer brush in photoshop in 4 different colours, blue, red, green and yellow. Then to create a glow underneath each rune i took the original colour and darkened it and traced over the rune and put that layer under the rune to create light emanating from the rune.
To make my trees i used the sapling generator and modified it until i got the tall Scandinavian trees that i was going for once i rendered it out i traced over the trees in photoshop. To make the leaves i used a the built in brushes within photoshop and make a leaf layer and then on top of that a snow layer on the leaf's as i want the piece to be in a snowy Nordic environment, however the leaf and snow layers were a bit too bright so i lowered the hue and saturation to match the atmosphere and colour of the rest of the image. However after taking a look at the image from a distance the leaf's were distracting so i decided to change it and the way i went about doing that was using various different brushes and colours for the new set of leaf's i did this by first picking a green midtone and then putting a darker value at the bottom and then a lighter one at the top and then using the brush on an eraser to blender smoothly between the colours and this looked much better and much more natural.
To make the portal that the hand is coming out of i drew the main portal and then used that as a clipping mask on an image of a galaxy image that i got off of google, to make it appear if a tear in space and time is forming to release a celestial being.
To add the bark texture to the tree i took a bark image of the internet and made it black and white in photoshop and then used a eraser with a soft fall off and went around the whole image once i had that isolated part i defined it as a brush pre-set. I then did this for the stone floor, wall, slab and wooden torch poles.
Final
