Safarza Daegan analysis

 

I want to take my blog back momentarily to doing just my daily styudies of artist process to understand this a little better since I'm currently working on some new personal pieces. Im very interested in how it is that the artists are using 3d to help them with putting together the geometry of a scene. 

When we first see the gif this is the first stage. The two characters are arranged in basically the heirarchy that they will be in the final and we see a quick gestural of the backdrop but also the lighting of the scene hitting the bodies of the figures. 

As we skip ahead two steps we see the figure on the right has been made smaller but the shape is still the same  and the figure running towards our other character has also been pushed to the right so that now we see the other end of his weapon. What is interesting to note about this piece at this level is that it is diagonal in its composition in a sense. The top left we have a shape moving into the page and on the bottom right we have a shape moving into (or out of) the composition as well. 

Here we also see the volumes of the forms are being shaded and blocked in but the highlight from before has been temporarily taken off so that the artist can focus on the midtones that describe the form. We also see the ambient occlusion between shapes is being illustrated here to help give it that 3d feel to it. Notice also the red is still the only strong color, although the backdrop tints towards blue a tiny bit. 

At this next step we see that 3d has been introduced and this has given the midground character a firmer ground to stand on and so he has yet again been repositioned to fit better to the ground plane. Other things that have been changed is that we can see that the figures weapons no longer overlap and they can both be seen clearly. We also see drops of flat colors throughout the design and have a clear distinction between the purple and red of the two enemies. In the backdrop we can see that the sky has a blue tint to the top but a orange, reddish tint as it goes down.  The highlights along the forms are back as well and we get an introduction to our light source that was originally planed for. 

Next we see our characters in more and more detail but most of the detail here is in the environment. We start to see the artist go through and render the background elements and the bottom plane of the floor in more detail. Also the light seems to be in a much more yellow tint as it crosses over the figures and we get strong specularity on the weapons themselves. 

Next we have a continuation of detail being added to the image here acouple of things I noticed is that the specularity that was so bring on the armor before has been toned down and we start to see more detail and forms in the background come out. The texture on the wall behind them adds quite abit of visual interest that I wouldnt have thought about. I also wanted to break this image down into the threshold mode and see what we can see here as well:

Here we see a clear grouping of forms and shapes if we break them down into just black and white. The success of a composition then may rest on whether a comp is successful as a black and white image and I would say that if we toned down some of the threshold this image would succeed. Other elements of the composition now stick out clearly. For example, The long bridge of arcs that go into the distance connect us by silhouette between these two figures, this could almost be thought of as a direct line. We can also see the silhouette is very well established of the midground figure as the shapes around him are very clear. 

The rubble on the ground, the shadows behind him and the cape and figure himself seem to be emerging out of a bigger shape in the background so this gives it a dynamicism because of the grouping of these value shapes. 

Jumping ahead a few steps and we see that more detail has been added to the figures, their weapons and the environment as a whole. There is a slight atmospheric haze between the bridge an the area where the figures stand. We also see that there is some motion added that carries us in a upward motion towards our character on the right in the form of debris. 

Final, more ruble has been added in the midground that makes the characters feel like they are apart of a dynamic scene as debris overlaps with both figures o degrees and we see rubble flying off in the distance behind them. We see the added magical touches of the character on the right as well.