Behind The Scenes: Beach Illustration (Patreon)

 I'm spending some time on vacation this week, but I took my travel gear to be able to create something while away. Still, I didn't want to spend too much time on this, so I was looking for some simple style, that would look really good in terms of the result, but would be very simple to model. 

I've already made some stylized illustration using mostly the basic boxy geometry and it's easy to add a little bit of complexity by adding bevels and smooth surfaces to elevate the simple low poly design. And I've decided to continue with the summer theme, so I've fired up the search engines and looked up some photos.

I've looked up mostly beach images, that caught my attention and I really liked the one with a pier with a little shelter (is it called pagoda?). Also, the patches of green moss or grass looked great in contrast with the sea blue. 

I've included some images for the style and color reference too. I wasn't looking for no particular details in those, I just liked the smooth models, geometry and color vibrancy. And of course, I couldn't miss some sand castle :)

I made a really simple sketch to preview the layout I had in mind. Mostly, I needed to see, if I'm able to include a pier with the roof and still make it look like a beach at scale. Another problem was including the sand castle. As you can see, the proportions are way off and it was the only way, how to make it look good. So the roof is kind of smaller and sand castle is made much larger and this way, I was able to split the difference. After all, this is a stylized illustration and the visual impression is the main goal.

Have a look at some modeling tips, that made the whole process much easier.

So that was the beach scene. Thanks for reading and I hope it will help you with your next work. See you on the next one!