Brain Freeze
Following up the 3D/2D process from a previous painting, done to lean in more with also adding in sculpting and more organic elements. Plus a good reminder to mine from old work as well, as this piece was inspired by mushing together two older ideas from a few years back, shared below as well.
Final painting
Having a 3D scene in blender helped immensely with figuring out some perspective and form elements, but I try to really lose the stiff “3D-ness” of a render by the time I get to a final image. Painting is still my favorite way of making images, and I aim to have Blender be another tool to help support an engaging final painting.
3D scene and then the initial lighting/sky block-in done in Photoshop. I like doing all my lighting in a paintover as its easier to art direct and control, but sometimes I will try to set up quick lights in Blender to better understand how certain forms will look lit, like the cast shadow from the skull’s eye socket.
Video showing overview of set construction- as this view shows, elements were put together with a specific camera view in mind, a method I’ve really been finding yields fast results as opposed to constructing first and then finding a shot after.
Video showing overview of set construction- as this view shows, elements were put together with a specific camera view in mind, a method I’ve really been finding yields fast results as opposed to constructing first and then finding a shot after.
Useful modifer stack I found for this scene- the Remesh modifier especially can do a ton of work to “dress up” low poly assets, as these two images show.
Overview of the building variants created and then showing how, using geometry nodes to instance each building collection, I could then get a larger variety of buildings throughout the scene. The basic geometry node set up was just collection info-realize instances-geometry output.
Approach for constructing the skull- similar to how I go about sculpting dinosaurs for my paleoart. I am more comfortable modeling than purely sculpting, so the workflow is all about taking a model as far as possible using modifers and a non-destructive workflow, then applying all the modifiers and sculpting in key details as the final touches.
Last, this material set up was immensely helpful for quickly simulating snow. This shader just allows for different colors to affect the z- normals on a mesh as opposed to all the other areas, which is great for creating the sense of snow resting atop surfaces.