Spectacular 2D Entry: Karl Hauber

[IceKatze]

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132723134_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132723134_large.jpg)

I had a considerable amount of difficulty getting even the basic angles figured out for this composition. My concept is of this flying ship that is falling to the ground and a brave mechanic is attempting to avert disaster. My requirements were to have at least most of the character showing in the shot, and especially have the face looking towards the viewer, show the spaceship and its orientation, show the ground and the horizon line. Most compositions I tried sacrificed one requirement or another until I came up with this one.

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http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132726597_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132726597_large.jpg)

I think it is going to take me a few more tries to get the foreshortening on that arm right. I suppose my biggest concern will be getting folds to work right when I make the lineart, and hopefully the fact that everything is 'falling up' wont be too confusing.

[IceKatze]

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132730752_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132730752_large.jpg)

These are the colors that I am intending to work with in a rather crude form. I still haven't decided where I want the main light source to be, only that it should be from the sky, which is the bottom of the picture in this case. I might be able to squeak out a split complementary scheme with blue green and red, but I'll need to do a little research on colors at high altitude.

[PSych]

Hi IceKatze

Really interesting image, cool idea and sketch :thumbsup:
can’t wait to see more:bounce:
Good Luck

[MichaelZHsee]

hie there~interesting concept,perhaps,u wanna give the lil boy alil more tense in the expression as he seems pretty calm at the moment.?just a suggestion:)u might wanna show more of the flyer as well.keep it going mate.:scream:

[IceKatze]

hi hi

PSych: Thanks a bunch! I cant wait to keep working on it, its times like these when I wish I didnt have to go in to work for 8 hours each day. :p

sh@ke: I want to show more of the flyer, I really do, but I cant figure out a way around these problems. Constraint one is that the mechanic must be in line with the ship. In order to promote a sense of danger, the ship needs to be falling to the ground. Because of the moving air, the mechanic is going to be pushed in the opposite direction. Constraint two is that the mechanic must be the focal point of the image. If I pan out and show more of the ship, I will loose detail on the mechanic, especially the face. Constraint three is that I need to show the ground and the horizon. The viewer needs to know that the ship is falling towards the ground and quickly, so the ground needs to be in the veiw. If I rotate the view so that we are looking towards the back of the ship all we would see is sky. If I rotate the view towards the ground we get a nice view of the mechanic's rear end, while that might please some people, it wasn't my intention. :D So I am looking for a balance between these things. But you know what? I bet if I added a wing on the side, it would give the impression that it is flying machine, add more detail to the scene, and use up some of that empty sky space.

[IceKatze]

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132807706_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132807706_large.jpg)

After looking over some NASA imagery, I decided to go with this as my color palette for the background. It is going to be tricky making the background balance with the foreground, since it is so far in the distance it will look a lot more blue then the foreground. I'm thinking I will probably compress the color gradient since the ship is going to be covering up a lot of the background anyway.

[IceKatze]

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132815890_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1132815890_large.jpg)

I should have known better then to go into this with a strange perspective. The physical horizon line doesn't do any good here since the planet's position is arbitrary. I'll be spending the next few days away from a computer, so that will give me plenty of time to iron out the character and make the lineart for that as well. Unless I come up with something remarkably different while on break, I think this perspective will stay, or at least stay close all the way to the end.

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http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133232714_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133232714_large.jpg)

I still have more lineart to make for my mechanic, it is a little bit difficult since my scanner can only handle 8.5 x 11. I have to break the scene up into chunks. However, since I've got access to my fast computer, I went ahead and started laying down the base colors. I took some pictures of a nasa exhibit over Thanksgiving break and the colors were most helpful.

[TheFirstAngel]

looking fine so far, and cool concept. cool shading you have, very clean work. Judgerd from your background, a blue rimlight/backlight offers.
for alluminium and weathered metal, drybrushes offer to create nice accents in the specularity.
now burst the afterburner and keep on goin! looking forward to your next update:)

[zpapageo]

Great concept. The background looks very convincing and the ship looks good. Youve done some nice work in a short time. Keep it coming.

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http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133413851_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133413851_large.jpg)

I have finished stitching together most of the lineart. I'm still working on the lineart for the rest of the primary paneling. When I get that finished I should be able to go all out on the coloring. I have the feeling that I'm going to need some drastic changes to the fire and it's resulting cast lighting. It just looks too soft the way it is, but when I make the flames intense, they seem out of place with the rest of the ship. I also have decided to go ahead and redo all of the jagged metal holes so that they have more unity. Also, I'm looking for ways to cut down on the number of layers that I'm using, as I have far too many. My hope is that when I have all the lines stitched together I'll be able to flatten the image into 4 parts: the burning engine, the mechanic, the background ship parts and the sky/ground.

[IceKatze]

hi hi

the1st_angel: Thanks for the advice, I've never had much luck with fancy brushes, but it's certainly worth another shot. I've made a few myself for some specific tasks, like foliage, but so far I've been sticking with plain old round brushes. I'll have to do some experimenting. Hopefully I can get this thing done at least a day and a half before the deadline, I've been spending just about all of my non-working/non-sleeping time on it, which admittedly isnt as much as I'd like. :p

zpapageo: Thanks! :) It's a comfort to know people are enjoying the work. The trickiest part of the background is still coming up, as I intend to place some clouds and buildings there. The buildings will probably be the most time consuming part, and I'm still at a loss for how to make them look like buildings but not clash with the ambient background.

[IceKatze]

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133492017_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133492017_large.jpg)

Full scale coloring of the mechanic is on hold until I can find a convincing skin tone to fit the situation. I also may need to up the resolution on some of the details, eyes and mouth in particular since they are so key in establishing emotion. I used adobe illustrator to make some rivit patterns for the ship, and I'll be making the interior guts with illustrator as well.

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http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133506188_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133506188_large.jpg)

I've added the lineart for the engine's guts, as well as reworked the exterior damage. Some tinkering with the background was done as well. I've gone through about five different fires so far and while I like this version the best, it still doesn't look right. I'm going to try to alter the main coloring to be more dramatic and perhaps that will help the fire fit in better. I'm also realizing just how out of practice I am at faces, too much 3d modeling work and not enough 2d practice I suppose.

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http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133641064_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133641064_large.jpg)

Getting close to the final stretch. I need to detail out the clouds, finish the city and get the mechanic's skin tones down. I did some research on people's faces in cold conditions, since the air up there would be pretty darn cold, though the nearby fire may produce a great deal of radiant heat, she still had to get there which probably took a while.

[IceKatze]

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133662060_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133662060_large.jpg)

I've got the environment just about completed, maybe a few minor tweaks here and there left to do. My photoshop file has grown to immense size and now takes a minute or two to save or load it. I would have liked to have done the whole thing at 600 dpi, but I wonder just what sort of computer it would take to pull off something like that successfully. The mechanic is next, just a few more hours and it should be done.

[IceKatze]

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133734967_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133734967_large.jpg)

This is it, unless I see something glaringly wrong in the next few hours, this will be my final coloring. Thanks to everyone who came in to see the work in progress.

[IceKatze]

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133764911_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/10/9480/9480_1133764911_large.jpg)

The Short of it: "A young mechanic must risk life and limb to make vital repairs to a crippled space craft before it crashes into a heavily populated city."

The Long of it: "So there I was, pressing myself into the back of my seat, closing my eyes and waiting for the gravity change to pass. The navigator was casually counting off the altitude when all of the sudden a thunderous report echoed through the cabin. Now I was quite used to sudden loud noises mind you, the maneuvering engines alone can reach 130 decibels at times, so I didn't think much of it right away. It just wasn't quite right, the sound I mean, it had this rippling and grinding quality to it just along the edges. No no, I just kept my eyes closed and pondered it for a few moments. I didn't really notice that the entire ship was listing planet-side. It's like I always say, if you're not made for re-entry, no amount of repetition will make it better. Its a bit embarrassing yes, but I didn't realize something was wrong until the everyone started yelling and the master alarm went off. I was just a mechanic at the time, it was the chief technician that was in charge of reading the instruments. I don't remember exactly what he said, frankly there was an awful lot of cursing involved, but there's no way I could forget what the problem was. The number three engine had failed in the most catastrophic of catastrophic ways, the controls for the other engines had locked up, we were leaking hydraulics, the liquid fuel was burning, and we had about three and a half minutes before we smashed into the ground. On top of that, the only way to repair the damage was on the outside of the ship.
The captain had ordered everyone into the lifeboats and I was struggling to get out of my chair when the navigator spoke. He was just sitting there, like a deer in headlights, staring at the instrument panel. 'Captain, our trajectory, we're headed straight for New Caimport City." He choked on the words, and I felt a sinking in my guy. Two and a half million people lived in New Caimport so there really wasn't a safe place nearby where we could aim the ship and avoid a twofold disaster. The chief technician had already followed orders and was nowhere to be found, so I felt it was up to me to do something about it. Of course I wanted to bail out, and if there hadn't been a score of innocent people right below us I probably would have. So I volunteered, tumbled out of my seat, grabbed my tool kit and some extravehicular tethers. By the time we reached a safe altitude to open up the hatch, there was only one minute and forty seven seconds left before it would be too late. It was a little windy out there to say the least, the hatch flew open and promptly snapped off it's hinges and when I climbed out I was pushed to the tail of the ship, which was fortunate in retrospect. But the one thing I remember most clearly wasn't the wind, it was the cold. It was beyond freezing up there, and for a moment I was worried that I wouldn't be able to use my fingers. By the time I reached the busted engine, my hands and face were so numb that I actually was glad that one of the fuel lines had ruptured and was spewing out a trail of fire. Yes, the clock was ticking and I wasted no time pulling the maintenance hatch off. Normally these kinds of repairs would be made in space and one would wear a vac suit, of course I didn't have time to put one on so the grips, handrails and tether clasps were much easier to handle without the bulky gloves on. But did I mention that it was windy out there? It turns out that the valve I needed to shut was about the size of my thumb and mounted on a frail looking little tube that was even smaller. The last thing I wanted to do was break it even further, boy I would have gone down in history as the worlds most ill fated and clumsy mechanic for that. No, but it was still a challenge to close that valve. I don't really remember what happened after that. After I closed up the valve, the ship fired its engines and I smashed my head against something. When I came around, I was sitting in a hospital bed and there were a bunch of famous people standing around wanting to shake my hand. Yeah, there were cameras, and they're just as bright as they look in the movies."

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