Departure Ceremony

This one also was a commission. Thing to be depicted was prior moments of a spaceship launch, like a ceremony or the loading of a spaceship before taking flight into the unbeknownst. I started with roughies... hyper-rough sketches to give me an idea of how it could look:

... super rough huh?

So I liked the shape of the first sketch, but somehow I wanted to explore more angles. I went and sculpted the ship:

Rear of the spaceship.

Couple of angles.

Then modeled all the context: environment and floor etc... Oh I tend to use little rectangular prisms where the people is going to be painted. So all that rectangular tall boxes represent people, I do so I can be coherent with the perspective and size. I set up lighting and shot this:

This hyper-rough sketch I actually send to client explaining my idea.

I liked how the ship looked from the rear but was not so sure of the front and sides. So I went and redesigned the ship. Sculpted another one:

This sculpture is the one I made another illustration with and posted it. Here's the other post. That old post was done later than this piece. Was a way for me to try and expand a little the "universe" client was creating. Just for kicks.

So I liked that spaceship enough and set up the scene.

Set up the lighting and the camera angle and shot this:

And then painted over it.

You can see at the end I changed the colors of the ship and the characters. I made it with super washed out colors and client was great enough to point that out. Gotta study more how colors behave. A lot more.

Final:

Full res

A few zooms about the characters(cuz I always make them super small, but zooming in they look like of a pixel art game or something):

So you have here the crew receiving some kind of blessing by the elder-wise-lorekeeper before departure. Behind the elder his right and left hands, one of both would succeed him.

Look at that pixel art elder hahahaha.

The crew, form left to right:
The co-pilot, expert astronomer and navigator.
Samuel L. Jackson aka The hard-science expert.
The captain-pilot, chosen one to lead this spaceship.
The technician, expert spaceship engineer.
The bio-researcher, she would know if something looking yummy is toxic.
The crisis-manager, expert survivalist and badass tall gal.