Monday, April 4, 2011

Parks Canada Mural Process

Process post!, here we go!

The art directors basically wanted a scene depicting the fort, river, Village and loading dock, showing the inhabitants going about their daily business,
so I presented thumbs showing the scene from three angles.



They chose #3, which I refined...



And refined some more...



After the color comp was approved, it was pointed out that the front man would probably roll the barrel instead of carrying it.



Back to the drawing board..



After a few more tweaks I was given the go ahead to go into production.

Since I neither had the studio nor hard drive space to execute a drawing this size, I had to break it up into 30x 22 inch sections and ink them separately.






Whew!
2 bottles of ink, 15 sheets of paper, and 200 scans later...

I had the final drawing!


I spent about a day and a half flatting the entire thing, painstakingly selecting each and every shrubbery with the marquis tool.
It is probably the most tedious part of coloring digitally, but I find flatting to be one of the most valuable tricks I've learned over the years.
Not only does it cut your file size down by almost half, but it can save hours, nay, DAYS of work.



Some quick color blocking, trying to figure out how to frame the scene.



Hilights:



Some additional textures:



Some detail shots:






And the final image:



I hope you all enjoyed that!
I'll be posting some more work from the same project in the next few days.

Cheers,

-Laura

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Beautiful! Thanks for showing your process. It looks like you worked really hard for that final product.

Mike Sudduth said...

This is brilliant! Really admire your work. Wish I was as awesome as you are.

Anonymous said...

This is some insane detail! Amazing work!!

rina said...

I somehow like the version without outlines a lot :) good work anyway!

Laura Dollie said...

I saw this image on your deviant art and thought it was amazing, but it's even more impressive after seeing the work that went into it. So, did they do a large format print and adhere it to the wall then? I mean, this is the final image, not the final sketch before you paint it on the wall, right?

laura! said...

Thanks everyone!
Haha, Laura, if this was only a sketch I think I'd shoot myself in the face. I think they're going to print it and adhere it to a wall, yes.