Behind the Scenes: Sound Stage (Patreon)

You probably read, that it's a good thing to find a niche within your work and stick to it. You even might have heard it from me. And it's true. It really helps to stick to a certain style or theme and over time it's easier to get recognized for it. But how do you know what's the best way to go?

That's where experimenting and trying out new things comes in. I do this regularly. After a batch of works that I'm known for, out of nowhere I will do something completely different. Either it's a new set of tools I'm using, or a completely new style and artistic approach. It's slow and it's often painful. But I do it for two reasons.

I get to explore new horizon, enjoy some uncharted territory and get excited for something new. It's a like a reward for sticking to my style for a longer period of time. And the second is growth. That's why I don't mind the slow process and a bit of hurt. Because I get to learn something new and possibly a new bits of knowledge to plug in to my regular work. That's how you develop a style over time.

Visit the full Pinboard here

The theme for this week was a concert stage. I simply took it out of the list. I think someone suggested in comments a while ago. That's just a perk of sticking to a habit of writing everything down. But I didn't want to do a classic diorama this time. I searched for some fresh inspiration and found some abstract designs I really liked.

I thought about combining the stage theme with some free form abstract platform design and loved the idea, so I went and explored some more abstract elements and saved them to mood board. I was mostly looking for nice geometry bits, that I could incporporate into the final design.

I found a lot of interesting stuff, like a lot of different waves, abstract knots, cloth compositions and one interesting artwork resembling a 3D equalizer made of tall blocks. I thought that would be a nice thing to use as a backdrop.

I still had only a blank piece of paper in front of me, so I got to work and sketched out few possible ideas for a layout. Mostly, I was looking for a way to lay out space for all the different instruments, the drums, guitar, bass and some vocal mic. That's the core elements, that need to have the most presence and focus, the rest should be just the style flavor.

After settling on a layout I liked, I went ahead and tried to sketch in some more sound-related elements, mostly speakers. I wanted to make them recognizable as speakers, but at the same time, I thought they were a great opportunity to use them as a transition form real to abstract. So either scale them up out of proportions, or make them tall, resembling some skyscrapers peeking through the clouds. In the end, I went for both.

The rest was just about balancing the composition by placing dome of these cool abstract shapes and elements around, like different waves, arches, bubbly forms and already mentioned background.

You can watch the process video on Youtube