A Unique Environment

From the weekly challenge series, a "unique environment" concept painting a la Scott Robertson from The Gnomon Workshop.

The gist of the process is creating a series of quick grayscale marker sketches (or the digital equivalent) and overlaying them in Photoshop on individual layers with varying layer effects.


Then, within the jumble of visual information (like finding recognizable forms in clouds or wallpaper patterns), identify the visual "bare bones" of a composition and render it to a finished view.


In working through this process, I found considerable difficulty in visualizing usable compositions hidden within the overlay of abstract sketches.


After a lot of experimentation with layer order, effects, opacity, etc. one clear landscape finally materialized.


The process work for the project is shown below:

"...ascends..."

Brock and I have decided to resurrect our weekly challenge to generate concept art and reinvigorate our creative drives.

This challenge tasked us with the design of pieces based on any part of the following randomly generated sentence:

"A particular pose ascends near the rock."

I simply chose the single word "ascends" around which to design this piece.

Line work and a basic shadow layer were created in Sketchup Pro and exported to Photoshop where the image was painted and composited with a few different photo plates.

Though originally intended as a mall or possibly a hotel with the perspective itself and the elevators representing the concept, the piece evolved into an airport which provided both the visual payoff of the airplane as well as another layer of "ascends" to the piece.

In the fall of 2003, to coincide with the release of Imagineer Jason Surrell's book, The Haunted Mansion: From The Magic Kingdom to the Movies,  as well as the distribution of the live action movie based on the attraction, Disney released this "book" which essentially is a collection of pieces to construct a small scale paper model of--not The Haunted Mansion--but a form of haunted mansion based more on the production design of the movie.

The ghostly blue nuts and bolts shown in the blister pack attached to the cover are the fasteners for all of the walls, floor, and partial roof.

The availability of the book was short-lived and now it fetches about three to four times the original cover price on the secondary market for a copy in new condition.

It's really geared more for the much younger as is evident in its overall simplicity and the illustrative style of the graphics. Hard core Mansion fans might collect it just because it is what it is, but once it's put together, the result is largely anti-climatic.

However, I decided to scan all of the pieces and take them into the cg realm for a bit of fun. Until an animated fly-through can be rendered out and composited, here are a few stills:

(click images for larger view)

The model was massed using SketchUp Pro 7, then imported to 3DS Max 2009 for materials, lighting and rendering. A bit of post was then done in Photoshop CS2.

In the early stages of planning for The Haunted Mansion, imagineer Ken Anderson created a series of concept sketches for the original idea of a walk-through attraction.

One of those vignettes depicts an overhead view of a dilapidated parlor with an organ and ghostly footprints leading to it.

 

 Having admired this sketch for many years now, I finally found the opportunity to recreate it in 3D with interpretive finishes and materials.

The model space was created mostly in SketchUp Pro 7, then finalized and rendered in 3DS Max 2009 with post done in Photoshop CS2 (click image for larger view).

A relatively quick Photoshop exercise using a downloadable coloring page freely available on the net.

Might use it as an avatar for something.

For this week's Illustration Friday exercise, the topic was "subterranean."

During my first year at Ringling, as a class exercise, I created a series of photo collages using the architecture of a campus building.

One of those collages provided the inspiration for this image (see below).

The image was created using Sketchup pro 7, 3DS Max 2009 and Photoshop.

In an effort to "stay in shape," so to speak, Brock and I have decided to participate in a weekly challenge based on the ideas supplied by illustrationfriday.com

This week's word was "perspective."

So, here's my run at it using 3DS Max and just a bit of Photoshop.

Soon (hopefully) we'll also have a blog set up to showcase these weekly "workouts." It's just too easy to get lazy about things--especially during down time between projects.

The point is to stay sharp...maybe even push a little.

Though, maybe not this week.