Emma’s Refuge

Sunday, September 15th, 2019



Emma’s Refuge

“There’s a high class party going on somewhere. She needed a break, contemplating to leave or not. She certainly has enough of all these caricatures, throwing around senseless phrases and drowning in mindless smalltalk.”

Although I worked on this for quite a while, it was a rather spontaneous decision to go for it. I downloaded a free promo pack of 3d cyberpunk buildings by Kitbash3d. When I started to convert them to make them work with Vue properly, I naturally played around with the objects. I found a neat angle and I suddenly had a scene in my head. Then I discovered that the fine folks at Kitbash3d made a contest. All you have to do is to use the buildings. “No problem!” I thought! =D

I don’t have many night scenes and took this as a challenge. Cyberpunk needs to be at night and even better with rain! Still, I decided to add a couple of elements you normally don’t see too much in a typical Cyberpunk environment. I fell in love with this scene while working on it and I think it’s easily one of my better pieces.

I noticed the potential of the scene very early on and spent a lot of time with details. I took apart the building objects and kitbashed stuff here and there for additional details. The lady was created with DAZ Studio. I sat down and modified the dress quite a bit and it turned out rather good. That dress on the right kind of woman would surely be a sight to behold. Rendering was quite a chore due to all the lights in the background. I did separate renders for the back and front. Which resulted in tons of passes I combined in Photoshop. So yeah, there were tons of adjustments in Photoshop.

8000×5333 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom – Kitbash3D

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSociety

Regards

signed

Calista Square

Wednesday, August 7th, 2019



Calista Square

I started this one years ago and kept it on my drive. Sometimes I tend to keep my stuff laying around for no apparent reason. As if I’m waiting for something. Well, my inner voice tells me to finally release it. It’s scifi cityscape time! It’s certainly been a while since my last one and so far there’s nothing new in the pipeline for now. So this one has to make a splash! It does for me at least and I’m happy to finally share it.

Is there a story to the scene? No. Not really. Inspiration? Yes, sure. Although nothing specific I tried to capture. Still, I wanted to connect this place to my little “Cities Of Linestra” series. Just another city on Linestra, a planet populated with all kinds of cities. Originally it also wasn’t planned to turn this into a project this big. Sometimes these projects decide to take a live of their own and guide you. You cannot just stop there. And yeah, so I added more and more stuff.

However, in the end I was just trying to create a vista/place I would love to see or visit for real. So yeah, I just sat down and had fun. Sometimes that ‘fun’ turned into real ‘work’ but I knew it would pay off at the end. And I was right.

As usual I worked a lot with Vue to bring it all together. But I also used C4D to create variations of model assets I own. You know, to give my scene a more individual look and feel. I think I had this scene done 3 times before I was really calling it done. That is when, having time for your work to grow, pays off. I often need that time. So I ended up adding lots of cool elements I otherwise would have never included into the scene.

I started with rendering a master plate and continued to refine the scene in Vue. That resulted in multiple additional renders that were added piece by piece to the scene in Photoshop. There I changed the overall feel and added some photographic effects. I really enjoy the colours and the overall depth of the scene. Again a picture that allows to dive in, explore and discover new detail each time you risk a closer look.

6500×3514 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSociety

wallpapers available

Regards

signed

It Must Be Stars

Thursday, April 18th, 2019



It Must Be Stars

“We just entered the outside perimeter of the city. I heard amazing things but it’s not really visible yet. Just a glimmer on the horizon. We’ve set course and got official permission to enter the inner perimeter. Slowly one big, blurry light became two, then three, four and soon thousands. “It must be stars” I thought, as we moved in closer and the city grew in front of my eyes, with all its life and lights.”

This one originally was a commission request but it ended up nowhere since I knew it would be quite a task if I wanted to maintain my usual quality – and my level of detail and quality was one of the main reasons the client contacted me. In the end there wasn’t enough budget. So I decided not to throw my initial concept work away and gave it a go as a personal piece. I think it kind of ended up like something the client would have been quite happy with. Although I did go a slightly different route when the commission fell apart.

For the look I wanted something ‘ancient/old scifi’ looking. A palace and a city that look oldish and majestic but still have some kind of base in technology. Much like Naboo in Phantom Menace I guess. Of course I drew some inspiration from the briefing material I got from the client. Although their idea was underwater and the scene I created isn’t. Even though the color scheme might suggest it is. It’s more a place or location you would find in the Marvel universe I guess. That’s at least how I approached it.

I certainly would love to explore that city and get blown away by the sheer scale of the palace above the city.

7000×3196 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom – World Machine – Geoglyph

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSociety

wallpapers available

Regards

signed

In Serenity

Wednesday, February 13th, 2019



In Serenity

The inspiration for this one came from a piece I did in 2014. Sanctuary. A try in doing a scifi/cityscape night scene properly. I thought it would be cool to have a companion piece to it but with a daylight scenario. Something that kind of follows the same composition and setup. Not only being different in the light department but in the environment too. So this one is more based in a nature, mountain area and not in a city. So if you would put prints of them on a wall, on th left Sanctuary and on the right In Serenity, you would have a neat combination of scenes that compliment each other in many ways.

The creative process started with taking apart the 3d elements I created for the scene in 2014. I kept the curvy wall and decided to add a cool looking mural relief kind of element in the middle of it. For the material I wanted it to have a futuristic feel of a material we might not have invented yet. Something reflective and transparent but still very much hard surface looking. Maybe a futuristic kind of concrete. The other elements fell into place while working on the scene. Plants by Xfrog helped to round out the wall with some green. Thanks to Aron Kamolz for allowing me to use his falling ivy like plants on the ceiling elements. The lady was created in DAZ Studio. Background terrains done in World Machine/GeoGlyph2. With all the 3d elements in Vue and a good lighting setup, I rendered several passes of the scene and combined it in Photoshop. Then followed some overpainting, adding additional textures and fixing some issues. Lightroom, last but not least, helped me finalize the colour of the scene.

7000×3196 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom – World Machine – XFrog

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSociety

wallpapers available

Regards

signed

Into The Distance

Saturday, November 3rd, 2018



Into The Distance

Here we have a piece I created for webinar shows I held this year for Digital Art Live (sponsored by E-On Software). Two parts in April and two parts in October. I used this project to explain my typical techniques and tried to show some experimental stuff by using JSplacement for the terrain. This gave the overall scene a neat unusual look. In the April shows we took a look into the creation of the scene in Vue and In October we checked out how to efficiently render the scene and get the most out of our post work options for best final results. A lot of time went into the preparation and I was very nervous before the shows. Overall it went all smoothly and I was able to go through all the elements I had planned to show. In the end it were around 9 hours of runtime. I can still feel how dry my mouth felt after more than 2 hours of talking. =) The audience was fun and it was a neat interaction with them and their questions. And the final image doesn’t look to bad too. Even though I admit I did add some extra detail after the shows.

I tried to keep the scene as simple as possible with its setup and look. So I wouldn’t lose myself in explaining something in the shows most attendees wouldn’t have been interested in. So you could argue it looks pretty generic. I tried to give it a more special look by using terrains created from patterns done with JSplacement. I think that helps to move the scene a little out of the ‘generic’ category. Hope you agree! =)

5000×2283 – JSplacement – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Scene with No Depth Of Field
Scene Perspectives: View 1View 2View 3View 4View 5

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSociety

wallpapers available

Regards

signed

Bleeding Skies

Sunday, September 16th, 2018



Bleeding Skies

Now this one is probably a little inspired by that one map in the first Titanfall game. Pretty cool idea they had there. Giant guns targeting enemy ships in orbit. And sure, old idea! Anyway, guess I really needed to try myself on that. What I also did was to work in 16bit depth to get the most out of the colours. But you feel the load when working it in Photoshop. You definitely need some RAM for it to efficiently handle the process.

I’m a little split on how successful I am with this one. I had to leave out some of the original ideas in favour of a good composition and not make the scene appear to cluttered with stuff going on. These ideas aren’t dead though. =D I just hope the intended dynamic feels comes across nicely and sparks some imagination on what’s happening above the clouds. There’s certainly a heavy battle raging!

7684×3508 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom – World Machine

Part of Project Aurora: Red – https://www.projectaurora.art/

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSociety

wallpapers available

Regards

signed

Comcept 32 – Halo Over Sunset City

Wednesday, June 20th, 2018



Comcept 32 – Halo Over Sunset City

Welcome to SUNSET CITY! This one was a pure just for fun project. I was fiddling around in Vue when I stumbled over some atmosphere settings that created a solar eclipse kind of look. I thoroughly enjoyed that look and started to randomly add some buildings. That quickly turned into kitbashing all kinds of stuff into the scene… which lead to the results we can see in the final piece now. No specific story for this one. From what it looks like it appears to be some sort of space/port hub structure. Surely a place that could easily write its own stories – good and bad.

5000×2283 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Part of AURORA: AURORA Exhibit II

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSociety

CGTrader Digital Art Competition

wallpapers available

Regards

signed

Parsec City

Thursday, May 10th, 2018



Parsec City

Not too much to say about this one. Originally a commission, I did have some real fun with it. Earlier this year the rights fell back to me and so I decided to show it to the world! The pic is four years old and the cool thing is that it holds up. I still really enjoy this piece.

Vue – DAZStudio – Photoshop – Lightroom

Concepts

Atmosphere Study

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSociety

wallpapers available

Regards

signed

Endeavours – Things To Come

Tuesday, December 12th, 2017



Endeavours – Things To Come

“Finally being where I belong, I cannot wait to discover what this new world has to offer!”

Here we go with the final piece of part two in my Endeavours series. I don’t have too much to say about this one except that I wanted a final scene that shows our small family finally united again. Along with a (maybe a little too obvious) hint of where the journey might go next. I have some ideas. Although I’m not sure how and when I’ll tackle those. As usual there are parts in the scene I’m more happy with than with other parts. But that’s just how it goes I guess. =)

I did use the base scene I used in the previous three parts of the series and changed the camera angle and lighting a bit. There might be elements that are a little adjusted and changed but I tried to keep it minimal to not ruin the continuity. In Photoshop I played around with a more stylized/dreamy look and found it works nice to conclude part two of the series.

Overall I’m happy with how part two turned out and it gave me two or three pictures I really like. With this picture concluding my year 2017, I hope you enjoyed the ride so far too!

To be continued…

5000×3333 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

ENDEAVOURS Part Twelve

ENDEAVOURS Part Thirteen

ENDEAVOURS Part Fourteen

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSocietyBehance

Regards

signed

Endeavours – Reunion

Thursday, November 23rd, 2017



Endeavours – Reunion

“I’m overwhelmed seeing you two again. Holding my little girl in my arms again. Seeing my wife’s warm smile. Finally reunited, it’s time to build something new and discover all the secrets of this place!”

This one is probably the scene, of part two of my Endeavours series, I’m most unhappy with. I played around with it a lot and it’s probably my first ever square format scene. Maybe it’s just the format. I definitely wanted to show a reunion scene with all the characters. To bring the series of images, from a more distant point of view, to a more closer (maybe even emotional) level. A part in me says it works and another part is still missing something. However, I put far more time into this one than I originally intended and ultimately I think it serves its purpose just fine.

I worked with the same scene I created for picture #13 and used a different angle/position for the camera. Due to the changed angle I had to work in some additional details. Especially on the house. Rendering went fine and bringing the scene together in Photoshop was fun. As usual I had to do some additional renders to fix stuff. The characters were also rendered in a separate pass. Overpainting and added optical effects helped to define the overall look a little tighter. In the end I decided to give the scene a (fake) depth of field blur to guide the focus to our characters and not have the eyes distracted by other detail in the scene.

4500×4500 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

ENDEAVOURS Part Twelve

ENDEAVOURS Part Thirteen

The artwork on:
DeviantartArtstationCGSocietyBehance

Regards

signed