The rendering detail on the clouds and rocks so far is looking great! Great job, can’t wait to see more. The top of the fogbank feels somewhat abrupt to me… but then, living in the San Francisco area, I’m used to seeing fog from below, down in it, not from so far a distance away and above! 
Anyhow best of luck with the rest of it!
-mike
Thanks for replying!!! For a kid like me, it truly is an honor to have a member of the development team of one of my all time favorite games comment on my work.
I’m surely going to tweak the atmopshere effects quite a bit. When the entire environment is complete, I’m going to give the entire scene a full atmospheric make-over: more progressive fog on the clouds, glows on the rocks and in the sky (similiar to one of my previous entries), and more. And then there the whole action sequence thing…
This is a concept I made in a few minutes. I just used a large round soft brush on a new layer to add some fog and highlights here and there. The final will be more precise. This effect also makes the background less distracting.
This is a little update of my detail work. A slightly different perspective for the lower image.
hey, I can see this is going to end up being very realistic. I look forward to it! The mountains look almost chinese or japanese at the moment. It sort of lacks a focus for me, but maybe that’s the point eg what if epic events begin not between charcters or peoples but in the middle of nowhere? It’s like the calm before the storm or like following back the trail of a series of events, and finding that it was the tiniest insignificant thing that was the unexpected root or cause of all to come. Well, anyway, that may not be what you meant - but interesting idea perhaps…
For now, the image in it’s entirety is supposed to lack a focus point. The characters and battle scene stuff is going to be to focus of the image. As for all that other stuff you said, I havn’t really put a lot of thought into an interesting story or such. I just like to draw rocks. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if I can finish it in time. I’m spending too much time trying to draw in as much detail as possible. However, when the image is reduced to a normal viewing size, those details aren’t even noticable. blech. I’d better get moving.
Hello! Here’s the lastest fullview update of my image.
Things I’ve worked on: more clouds, more smoke, more rocks. I also ditched that dumb fog idea from a few weeks ago. It might be good for sketches, but it just doesn’t work with this particular image.
I’ve also decided to use a massive mountain range to bring the background into the foreground. Should look cool, I hope.
I would especially like crits on the overall perspective of the image. It may be tough to tell at this point, but any advice would be helpful! Thanks !
Here’s another quick mock-up of the special effects I would like to use. (maybe a little overboard. some areas are a little washed out.).
I also just discovered that I could use my ruler on the tablet! I’m a genious! (insert eye-roll smiley).
Here’s a slightly different version of the volume light and fog.
I added some white volume fog between the mountains in the back. Much better than the last technique I was using.
As for a lava, it’s obviously going to be a time consumer. Id just start going crazy, throwing reds and oranges in there, then start to detail it, get those colors down, or you’ll get swamped with other meshes. The fog, you should do once the piece is complete, so you have an overall color theme, then you can go in with a low opacity/fade brush and just work the streams. Looks good so far!
Thanks for writing a second time! Yes, the lava will be a pain (double that amount for the other side of the mountain range). This last image was just an atmospheric concept. I will surely wait until the very end for all of those little additions. I guess I just wanted something a little better looking to show up here. Thanks for thinking it looks good!
Hi,
I discover your work difficult all to see there is much
participant, the sky of your last post is pleasant and the colors are
good,
good road for the continuation of your project.
Interesting concepts. Hard to tell what it will look like in the end, but I really like the atmosphere you have established.
Trachefeux: Merci beaucoup pour vos commentaires! C’est vrai qu’il est un peu difficile de voir la directoin de cette image. Dans quelques semaines, j’espère avoir assez de progression pour donner une bien meilleur idee.
Airborn: Thanks a lot for your comments! It is true that it’s difficult to see the direction of this image. In a few weeks, I hope to have made enough progress to give a much better idea.
This is a close-up at 33%. It just shows some of the background mountains I’ve been working on today. My biggest concern with this area of the image is getting the perspective right the first time. Crits on that would be appreciated (again, I know it’s difficult to tell).
Another detail update. I also started work on a little ‘pit of doom’. It will undoubtedly feature volume light.
Here’s a full view of the progress so far. Hopefully, I have maintained a convincing perspective in the middle areas. Coloring on the smoke may be subject to change. Thanks for looking and replying!
Wow thats alot of work you are doing…:applause:
Just one suggestion, The plumes from the 3 volcanos in the distance could be drifting to the right along the horizon. Just a thought seeing the weather there looks very turbulant…
It’s been a while since I’ve last updated. At this point, I am quite confident that I will not finish in time. I don’t intend on rushing it just for the sake of submiting it. I’ll just continue on and post it later on in February… 2007.