process work

For a change, I thought I'd put up some process work on the last piece since some people have asked how I work. For me the first step is simultaneously working thumbnails to try to match what's in my head as close as I can, sketches of principal characters or props, and reference gathering. At this stage i'm working pretty small..maybe 500 by 500 or so.

here are some explorations of the staging and lighting. At this point I know what the scene will be, and I pretty much know I want a low vantage point. Now I need to figure out in a sloppy way how it all fits together...here's a sampling of pose work and character exploration sketches



and finally the final lead up to the finished piece. Laying down the perspective grid is a pain, but necessary for something architectural. I'm working at about2000 high by whatever wide, because my final piece is going to be twice that, and there's a huge amount of layers at this stage which would choke my machine to death.

after blocking in all the elements, it's just a matter of polish. Ordiniarily there would be more thorough color studies in here, but with the night lighting i knew what I wanted so I just went with it.

Well, hopefully this is something interesting...