It's been a while again, hasn't it? In my absence, I've been working on job applications, the demo work they've been giving. None has been positive yet, but this one in particular was... A fun challenge, to say the least. It was a game development company, and they asked for an isometric concept art. Here's what I came up with;
It's not perfect, I know. I'm not good at all with environment art, let alone buildings. It's the first time I'm trying something like this. This one destroyed both me and my computer. At some point when my Photoshop wasn't responding for the 100th time for the day, I started crying out of frustration. The crashes destroyed my workflow. At last, we installed all the tablet drivers and Photoshop on my husband's computer so I could at least finish the project.
Here are some progress shots for you. The project was sure a hassle. Almost all of the references and other artists started off with 3D sketches and painted over those but my 3D skills are pretty close to 0% so it was not a choice for me. I discovered making isometric art on Illustrator was a great choice, but the style didn't fit the case, so I was stuck with digital painting on Photoshop. Here are some early idea sketches;
I picked a sketch, cleaned it up to a lineart and slapped on some basic colors to continue.
Things didn't look lively and alive so far, so I sure wasn't happy and the computer sure was struggling even more with each step I take. I managed to put up shadings before my computer completely quit on me.
For overpaints, I switched over to my husband's computer at last, which helped A LOT, I wish we'd thought of that sooner.
The lighting and overpaints lightened up the piece, but I still needed a ground for that so I added grass and some plants around.
For most of the plants, I made my own brushes, like the Ivy leaves on the shade and the corner, or the bushes on the left. For the potted plants, I painted on, and ran out of time before I took things to more detail, hahaha.
Unsurprisingly, I didn't get the job. The first half of the work sure had an impact on my overall mental health. I'm still having headaches, haha. The rejection, though was expected, is heartbreaking after all. But this demo work gave me a new perspective on what I could work on to improve, which I'm glad to have realized. I sure will be doing more of those.
I hope you enjoy this more than I did, hahaha.
