February-2015 Timothy Downs

#1

This is my first mini challenge. I will be working on 1A. I am working in Blender to generate the initial base and elements. The gray area will be the crevice.

#2

WIP image 1: applying a base texture before making the crevice

#3

added ice and the crevice

added background / space
The background was constructed via photo manipulation using CC0 images.

Now its time to add in structure silhouettes and detail. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

#4

added some additional detail

#5

darkened the shadows

#6

getting close to the end

#7

I admire the overall optimistic feel of your piece, its refreshing as most sci-fi pieces have a very dystopia, depressing feel to them. Its always nice to see a different perspective :slight_smile: One thing I think that could benefit your piece though is some photo texture, this might help break up the CG environment, and add more believability.

#8

Thank you for the feedback. I am searching for the right photos to manipulate and incorporate.

#9

another update

#10

Some more refinement, trying to work out a spot that I’m not happy with.

#11

I’m looking for some opinions and feedback on the landing area. It is starting to feel off and I quite pin point what :banghead: . I don’t know if its is just me. Anything would greatly appreciated.

#12

exploring a different landing platform

#13

more refinement

#14

Hi Timothy,

I second what Aaron (DAAZED) said and think you should consider pushing it even further with some photo overlays/textures. Obviously you’re creating a piece for your portfolio and you have your own vision, but I agree with you about the landing pad and feel the piece as a whole could easily be a lot stronger with a bit more finesse work. For me, the issue seems to mainly be that the architecture is so centrally located, with literally no other yellow-lit, man-made elements around it to compliment and play off of it. I think you should consider adding more lighted architecture. Just photo textures …or modeled geometry if that’s your thing. Or maybe just some tiny yellow lighting in the crevices to help set the scale and add more yellow. I’d also consider varying the color of your mountains a little here and there (FG to BG haziness or maybe some warm/cool color shifts on the lit rocks vs. shadow areas?)

Hope that’s helpful.

#15

Thank you for your feedback. I’ll definitely will be adding some more architecture and more tonal variations.

This is more then a portfolio piece for me its inspiration get back into the graphics industry and get my crap together to get out of what feels like a dead end job.

#16

more refinement, I’ll be adding more structures soon

#17

All the comments have had some good points - but what this is really missing is a sense of SCALE. We don’t get any sense that this is a HUGE landscape, stretching away to a distant horizon.

Some things that might help:

-atmospheric perspective
(haze / atmospheric depth)

-more realistic fractal detail in the landscape
(The mountains are very blobby, and don’t have the multi-layer levels of detail we see in the real world)

-perspective/depth in the sky
(The sky looks like a flat card very close to the mountains - the moon is only lighting the mountains just under it, which makes it look like it’s floating just above them, and is by far the brightest thing in the scene)

-scale cues
(Almost nothing in this image gives us recognisable scale cues. Are the windows in your building 1m tall or 10m tall? This is tricky to do with bleak sci-fi landscapes, but it’s always needed in a successful matte painting)

Hope that helps
AJ

#18

AJ, thanks for your feedback. Your feedback is very useful and I’ll utilizing your suggestions as I move forward.

#19

Another update, not sure which version I’ll be using yet.
Next update I’ll be adding more structures and focusing on showing scale.

#20

more structures added, not sure if I’ll add more
now to decide between the two versions