Magic City
Brief: "create a digital painting presenting a lost civilization or magical ruins."
I started off by brainstorming ideas for a setting. --->
I then started to form a mood board of ideas. --->
Brief: "You have been hiking for days through the thickest deepest jungle encountered by an intrepid adventurer, you spot a lost civilization, it's huge and sprawling."
PoR:
-Adventurer.
-Civilization is unknown.
-who is this person that has found the civilization?
Conclusions:
-Isekai (another world)
-Adventurer directs 'me' to the nearest town while explaining what they're doing in the jungle.
-'I' get lost, and find this civilization.
Story/Background of the civilization:
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The civilization is spiritually gifted.
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Other civilizations were barbaric and drove them into hiding.
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They protected themselves by erasing themselves from the memories of the civilizations that attacked them and placed wards in the jungle that make people stay clear of the city. Didn't work on 'me' as 'i'm' from another world.
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The inhabitants of this city are demi-human.
Architecture:
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I'm currently going with the idea of blending multiple cultures architectural designs together. Most of my architecture will either be Far eastern or Celtic, as they are often seen with magic.
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For lighting/lamps, I was thinking
Research into the behaviour of animals. This helps me form an idea of the culture that will exist in this city, and where they would live.
First Concept:
While I was looking at different images of ruins, I came across this image of a staircase with archways beneath it. I decided to sketch it out and have it as a reference, but then I started to come up with the idea of a river flowing through the archways and forming a lake on the other side.
I started by sketching out stepping stones across the water and a path leading up to the stairs, with a bridge in the foreground, as if the person whose eyes we are looking through, are on the bridge.
From there I created the background of the jungle, with an opening in the canopy that has the two moons peeking through. I also started to plant crystals around the scenery to add the magical vibe.
When I colour this in I will be adding rays of light coming through the canopy from the moons, and they'll be reflected off the water. I also intend to add a glow from the crystals and have particles coming from them.
I shall finish doing the line details, then get ready to scan it on to paint it digitally.
Coloured Version:
I didn't end up doing this one, but In the future, it is something I would like to do. I think its best to create many ideas and improve upon them before creating a final piece. This takes time but not only helps all your ideas come out but also allows you to continue to improve your drawing skills.
Second Concept:
For my second concept, I started to think about the way the citizens live and where they live. As a few of them would live in the trees I started by getting some reference of civilizations living in trees, for this I looked at the Ewoks, on Endor, from Star Wars.
The designs of the houses may help to give me inspiration and ideas, but I'm leaning towards having more grand buildings and trees that are hollowed out.
I want to approach this concept by drawing the trees first then starting to draw the buildings. I aim to make the trees be more fantastical than normal trees.
Different Approach (Thumbnails):
After struggling to get any real concepts drawn, I began to sketch some thumbnails in order to get some basic ideas down (these can be found in the blog "Thumbnail Concepts for Magic City Project").
I then picked a thumbnail to further develop into a proper, detailed concept piece.
Final Idea Developed:
I took the Thumbnail which I had drawn digitally and edited the composition slightly alongside making the city more simple and the tree more full of life with different brushes.
From here i continued to improve the city and also edit the lake that the city borders.
I took the Thumbnail which I had drawn digitally and edited the composition slightly alongside making the city more simple and the tree more full of life with different brushes.
This gallery shows the timeline of my art.
The process for developing I took was to focus on making the outline be as detailed as possible to give off the feel of a proper setting.
After this, I focused on figuring out how the shading would work before going into the colourwork.
Unfortunately, due to being relatively new to digital art I didn't make proper use of different brushes, such as a cloud brush, and ended up with parts looking rather odd, an example being the flat clouds.
Furthermore, in an attempt to add as much detail to the image as possible I over complicated it and made all sense of motion within the image disappear. The use of colour was poor as well with no thought to analogous, complementary or triadic colour palettes.
Despite the many problems I suffered due to lack of experience I also feel it went well in some areas. For example, the reflection in the water after repeated attempts finally came out rather well and the trees actually resemble trees.
If I were to redo this piece there are many things I would take more care with and build upon. Starting from the original thumbnail stage, there was no sense of motion in the image, with the perspective being off and the village being overcrowded. A way this could have been fixed is having the village more spaced out like it is in the final piece, and using branches from trees as well as the roots of the great centre tree to direct attention around the image.
When it comes to the process of creating the image, and adding more detail, I completely forgot everything I had laid out as guidelines in my thumbnails blog and never looked back at them which left me adding and adding to the image instead of refining what was there and making it easy on the eye with proper colour palettes and natural melody.
Another thing that went wrong is the aspect of magic in the image. I had planned to add trees that looked magically imbued but instead, I only achieved this with the main tree, and left the rest looking normal. This completely broke the lore I was crafting in the piece and leaves a blank world with little left to explore. If this was to be used as a concept piece there isn't much to go off and would not give the idea of a civilisation that I was going for.
The key take away of this is I need to focus more on composition and colour while also taking time to sit back and look at what I've made. A key improvement I could have done is have less detail in objects that are far away and more in objects that are close, instead I took advantage of the digital medium and added as much detail as possible. In the future, I will refrain from zooming as much so I see what is seen by the onlooker more.
A key tool I can use from my current drawing software, Clip Studio, is the ability to have a window open at all times that shows the whole image even when you are zoomed in. This can help me see what the changes I make while zoomed in are doing to the overall picture in real-time.