Deep Blue Day
Painting depicting a group of mothers and newborns of the giant marine reptile, Ichytotitan severnensis. The scene is based on fossil beds from Nevada that show how a close relative, Shonisaurus popularis, would regularly migrate to the same shallow oceans to give birth. This was also a piece where I explored a method of more directly integrating a model from blender directly into the painting process, and I have some steps and a video of the model included below.
Final painting
Video taken in-blender giving an overview of the final scene. I used a workflow where I could directly paint UVs for the models in Photoshop and see them update in real time, which was incredibly useful for getting a more accurate render to use for painting.
Initial render- models each have a basic rig and were posed and adjusted once I knew what sort of composition I wanted. Blender was a great asset for quickly evaluating different angles, camera lenses, lighting, and arrangements to really find the scene that best fit my hopes for this composition!
Drawing over the model- blender is a great software, but I still like to take what the renders give me and further push designs via drawovers.
Final stage before lighting, atmosphere, and additional effects are added in. The fact I could directly paint UVs in Photoshop was a big time saver as that meant my changes from the render were mostly minor, and I could sooner get to the stage of finessing lighting and slight design tweaks.