Blacksmith House

So this past month was the "split focus test" and it turned out to not be so bad after all. Having to work on Pirates Vs Pirates and a portfolio piece at the same time (with equal amounts of attention and love) proved to be hectic at times but in the end it turned out just fine.

For this last class we basically had the month to create a portfolio piece. I've always wanted to try my hand at a hand-painted environment so I figured this would be a great time to have a go at it. When I sat down to think about what I should do my mind went straight to a blacksmith/forge house. I wanted to play with lots of vegetation so bamboo came to mind right away, the asian theme came right after that thought. I began to look on flickr and began finding some really cool photos of pagoda/temples, and in a completely roundabout way I arrived at Blizzard's new Pandaria concept art. Once I hit that vault of amazing art, inspiration began to flow and it wasn't long until I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do.

Here is how the final turn-in came out:

I've always really enjoyed seeing breakdowns of progress on artwork so this time around I made sure to take a screenshot of the scene every night. One thing that I absolutely learned with this project is the value of paintovers. There were times I would look at the scene and couldn't really see how I could push it further. Taking a screenshot and bringing it to photoshop for a quick paintover was a crucial step to find new ways to lay things out. Here are a couple of the ones I found most interesting: