Friday, March 27, 2009

Dragon WIP 2



I've been spending some time with this every day for the past few days, trying to get it to cooperate. Until this afternoon, it refused to do so. Cooperate, that is. I couldn't quite create a satisfactory backdrop, and the lighting situation was being troublesome. There are two light sources: the somewhat weak, warm light of the setting sun, and the hot purple-white light of the dragon's breath weapon. Now, I have some decent cloud forms blocked it, to be blended and softened later. I stumbled upon the solution to the lighting situation by playing with the blending mode of the breath weapon layer and changing it to color dodge, which made it quite a bit hotter and brighter, which therefore allowed me to put some brighter highlights on the creature's body. This increases the creature's sense of mass, and the hot, bright colors and values reinforce it as the focal point of the picture.
The structure was obviously made in SketchUp. Whether I make its base visible in the picture, or have it extend up from below the bottom of the image, I haven't decided. I haven't decided if there will be more buildings yet. Probably, since this scene is supposed to be taking place over a city. There will also be some more dragons and some fighter planes in the background, though I haven't decided where to place them yet.

I would have waited and posted a slightly more developed WIP than this, but just as I was getting going my tablet and Photoshop decided not to play with each other nicely, and I wanted to post something before I restarted my computer.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

awesome work!

the head looks cool - one part oviraptor, one part one of those crestless hadrosaurs that inflate the pad atop their skulls for a bellowing call.

my favorite part, though, are the wings - how they remind us viewers of real creatures, yet are not matches to any one group of flying animals.

kudos!

Moai said...

Thanks, rodlox! I'm glad you think that way about the wings, because that's what I was going for. There are skin membranes supported by an elongated finger bone, like pterosaurs, but I made the hand more similar to a bird or theropod hand. I also added a secondary support "strut" for the wing based on an elongated carpal bone, which I don't know of as having a real-world analogue.

Metal snail said...

Looking great I cant wait for the finished version!
The Sky colours are very nice.

Anonymous said...

I like it cool colors too.

Moai said...

Thanks, Snail and Chicken!