Bringing the chosen colour scheme into Photoshop, I decided to alter the sky colour in an attempt to bring the design together a little more. The colour was added using a hard round brush with 100% opacity and shape dynamics added. Shape dynamics give you a more natural feel when painting with a graphics tablet.
Moving forward it was time to add some detail to the concept. This comes in the form of photographic textures, these can act as a guide and be worked into using custom brushes in Adobe Photoshop. The layer that this is applied to is set to luminosity, allowing the detail to show through but displaying the colours from layers underneath it.
Using a custom texture brush I added some subtle highlights and shading, on a layer over the top of the photographic texture. At this stage I also painted some detail into the rocks on the underside of the floating island, using a custom rock brush preset that I created. Keeping the light source in mind, I thought about where the light would be occluded on the rocks.
A photographic bark texture was added over the top of the tree trunk base colour, again using a luminosity layer style. The texture was duplicated a few times and warped into the correct positions. I used the eraser tool and a low flow value to blend these photographic textures together.
Shading was added to the tree bark, wherever the light would be occluded. This was done with a multiply layer style, meaning that the information below the layer is kept intact. The base colour for the leaves had been removed because the edges were too harsh due to the hard brush used. I rectified this using a custom brush with a scatter setting and shape dynamics. The flow value was sat to 40% for this.
light and dark values were added to the leaves in two separate layers, one with multiply layer style and one with hard light. A low flow value allowed me to slowly build up the lights and dark's until the desired value was achieved.
Now it was time to add a little detail to the smaller elements in the environment. Photographic textures and custom brushes were used in order to add detail to this mine entrance.
some harsh highlights were added to any metal textures in the concept piece. I tried to keep these areas as small as possible, so that they would not distract the viewers eye away from the focal point in the composition, which I decided would be the mine entrance with light links leading out into the rest of the composition.
The small body of water was not clearly readable as water. In order to rectify this I copied another part of the image from a print screen. This was modified and pushed into position over the top of the body of water, giving the impression of light refraction.
Turning on the advisability of the shadows layer, which I had previously created, I added some more highlights in specific areas of the composition. Using the shadows as a guide for the correct placement, according the the light source.
In order to add a little more interest to the piece and push the perspective a little bit further, a small island was introduced to the composition behind the main island. This was created using a custom brush, to give the concept a traditional feel.
Custom cloud brushes were used to add some atmosphere to the concept piece, introduced with a very low flow value to build up the effect. I added thicker cloud formations on the underside of the island, to push the idea that the island is floating in the sky.
Finally a hard light layer was created and light values were painted in. This was to give the effect of a sun shaft, which lands on the focal point in the composition. Reflecting on this, more light value should have been added to the mine shaft area. At this time the light lands in an area with not much interest, just above the desired focal point.
This was an interesting task and I believe that the final result is fairly successful, considering that environment concept is not my strong suit. If I were to improve this I would alter the space in which the light shaft falls, in order to push the focal point in the image a little further. The buildings perspective could have been improved and more detail could have been added to them.
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