Concept Development - Prop Concept

Using my thumbnail as a guide I created this new and more refined silhouette for my prop. I decided to change the proportions of the prop slightly, because I believe that this increases the interest of the silhouette.

A sketch was fleshed out using a white colour and a soft round brush, with a low flow value. Mapping out the details of the prop and giving me a guide to continue the development of the design.

The sketch was inverted to black and the silhouette layer hidden. Giving me a base structure to add block colours.

I used a light gray tone for the glass in the lamp. This was painted on its own layer, meaning that I could add detail using a clipping mask. A clipping mask will allow me to paint detail freely, without painting outside of the designated area.

A darker gray with a touch of blue hue was used for the metal elements of the lamp design. All block colours were painted using a hard round brush on 100% opacity with shape dynamics added.

I wanted the lamp to appear well used, this meant adding burn marks to the base of the glass where it has oxidized. As the glass is not completely transparent, you would not be able to see the naked flame inside. Yellows and oranges were used to mimic the dispersion of light on the glass material, with stronger orange tones towards the center where the flame would appear.

Next a basic texture was added to the metal elements of the lamp, on a separate layer with clipping mask applied. This was done using a custom texture brush, to give the impression of dirt and oil on the materials surface.

A new layer was created with a multiply layer style. This was used to add shading and light occlusion to the design. The effect was build up using a custom brush with a very low flow value, giving me the ability to create soft transitions between light and dark colour values.

On a soft light layer I used a light colour to add highlights to the design. Again using a custom brush and low flow value. I tried to keep the specularity of the material in mind, replicating this in the rendered highlights. The material is a satin powdered metal and I believe that this is communicated well in the final image.

Orthographic images were sketched out using a soft round brush with a low flow value. This gave me the ability to mimic the effects of graphite on paper. I used the guides tool in Adobe Photoshop to aid me in the process of creating orthographic projections, making sure that the details were correctly aligned. A front, top and side were created because the back of the object is the same as the front and the 3D artist may need a top view to successfully translate the design into a three dimensional object.