BG: Balcony Process (Patreon)

Just wanted to make a post my process for one of the new areas.  Hopefully it's not too much of a spoiler.  If you don't want to see it don't read the rest of the post @.@

So one of the lessons I was combating when creating this illustration was really trying to capture a lot of energy in this environment.  I'm not quite happy with the BG for outside of the Cafe and even inside of the cafe as they feel so stiff and the architecture design needs a lot of improvement so I plan to go back and redesign those areas in the future.

I think I'm improving a lot more though.  As you can see from my concept image, there's a lot of energy captured in it, even though the perspective is all over the place, it just feels good.

I also started laying it up in 3D to follow my approach from the last environments.

Well, I started doing it in 3D and was realizing how stuff the design and proportions were becoming.  They were starting to stray heavily from my concept so I decided to just dump this and started drawing the linework setting up a perspective grid.

After laying this up and rigidly following my perspective grid, I was not happy.  The BG was looking incredibly stiff.  The design isn't the greatest, so I decided to dump it again.  I referenced back to my concept art for the area and was trying to decipher why it still looks way more appealing to me then my attempts at the final illustration.  I decided to take another stab at it and think I'm starting to figure things out. I decided to free hand it completely and just follow my "artist intuition" and I think it's working out for the better.

I'm definitely liking this a lot more.  Enough to move forward and finish it so I can move onto the next asset.  There's still some issues but I've learned my lesson and can't keep doddling.  You'll see the new love and care represented in future BG's....until I learn more lessons!  HAH.

And here's the final layup with all of the layers.  I've always been recording everything I work on so I will post all of those at some point ^_^