Environment Piece Development
With the blockout scene complete, I went about the beginning of the development of my final piece. This would show all elements of my scene, including the hero building, the Ward Ship, as well as the different pieces of "street furniture" that would populate the background. These include the planet, the asteroids and the distant mining frigates. Of these components, I wanted the Ward Ship and the Planet to be the most noteworthy, with the Planet taking up more canvas space than the ship whilst also framing it and putting focus upon it.
Of the elements displayed in this scene, the Ward Ship was that which I was the least confident with. This is because, in the past, I have worked on numerous pieces of art that include planets and asteroids in a variety of styles, and I am comfortable in a workflow when it comes to creating such pieces of art.
Examples of prior work of planets I have completed. I was able to use what I had learned in these to improve my planet work in this project.
The Ward Ship, on the other hand, I anticipated to be a challenge: this is because the ship itself is entirely comprised of metal, and the rendering of this material is not a technique I have particularly practised. Because of the environment that this scene is set in, the lighting is similarly unique, with the glare of an off-canvas sun shining harshly upon one side whilst the other is in constant shadow. This lighting would glare off the metal, creating noticeable tints whilst others remain dark or lit only by bouncelight from reflective and shiny areas.
I began with the areas that I was confident in, deciding to get them down as a basis in order to provide the backdrop fo the ship, which I believed would be much more difficult. Starting with the planet, I first created a rough sphere and completed a value paint of the areas that I wanted to be light and dark. Coming from my thumbnail development, I initially intended this to be a dark planet, predominantly grey with white ice caps across its surface. As such, I dotted areas of light and dark across the surface of the planet, which I would then push further apart in shadows and highlights. I then created a broad and curved shadow over one half of the planet, which would enhance the illusion of the planet being spherical, and additionally included a wide area of highlight against the sunward side.
With this initial blocking out complete, I added a black background to see how the planet would fit in the darkness that would be the space background of the scene. I then added in the asteroids, which followed a largely similar workflow. Again, going off the thumbnails I had previously designed, I kept them greyscale with white highlights. As I was tracing the masses over the lockout, I positioned several of the asteroids behind the planet and one of them in front of it.
I then began with the ship. To begin, I created a rough value paint of where I wanted the light and dark tones to sit, showing which areas would be in light and which others would be in darkness. To do this I used the lasoo selection, using the fill bucket to add tone. I then went over this in colour, choosing a bronze tone based off my previous work, aligning to the colour palette and theming of the Forge Fathers.
I then attempted to add shading and detailing appropriate to the metal material of the ship, though found this increasingly difficult. I was unsure how exactly to do this and looked to references of brass metal, noting the striations across the length of the metal and the sharp highlights seen when light hits it. I attempted to replicate these details though found the process difficult: I drew the lines too thick, being more akin to the detailing found in trees or bark than metal, and found shading and highlights to be generally lackluster. As such, I was unsure where to continue, and asked for feedback as such.
Feedback indicated that the difficulty I was facing may have been down to a lack of reference images and visual research, as well as a general lack of contrast and colour variety. As such, I went back to find more artists and examples of similar work, looking at them to determine what they did well that could improve my own art.
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