Hand Painted Indoor Castle Scene [WIP]

SylveriaDreams

Latest Update:




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I have been working on creating a bunch of props and came up with an indoor castle scene. I typically draw inspiration from characters I love for my art projects. For this project my inspiration is Sylvanas. The color palette will have deep purples, reds, and blues. The room will have antique furniture and I am drawing inspiration from gothic architecture. 

So far I have blocked out the room layout, a few pieces of furniture, windows, rugs and various different books. I might scrap the bed and start over. I'm also thinking about what geometry I can add to the wall trim to make it feel like a castle.



C&C are welcome!  

SylveriaDreams

I've made a lot of progress on this piece since my last post. For now here some work in progress screenshots of some of the books and I will add more screenshots later. I'm figuring out the color combinations right now for the books and then I will move on to refining these textures.

SylveriaDreams

I have made a lot of progress on my props. I'm going to move on to the furniture pieces next. Comments and critiques are welcome.

APiotrW

The props and their textures look really nice! I think you could make the book covers a bit thinner and less blocky. Also the texture for the tea cup looks less interesting than the others. Good work so far!

SylveriaDreams

@APiotrW  I intentionally exaggerated the book cover thickness to match Warcraft's style. I can make some adjustments to the tea cup so it stands out some more from the plate. Thanks for taking a look and providing feedback. I really appreciate it.

EJtheArtist

Hi @SylveriaDreams! I love the work you are doing so far. I'm trying to learn 3Ds coat and make hand painted stuff too, and stumbled upon your post here. I'm not sure what you think of this, but just a thought on colors and contrast....

Here is one of your images but with the colors a little more contrasty/saturated. Maybe its just my opinion, but I think your props stand out better with this increase of contrast and saturation. What do you think? (this is just a loose PS adjustment layer, I think I like the idea I describe below better)



I think you also stated on your website that its inspired by a type of warcraft demon character. So I also added what I thought was a good example of what I mean when I say "color improvements". If you look at the textures in work, everything feels very blue and on the cooler colored side, a bit dim. If you look closer at the reference of the warcraft demon, even though the colors are cooler blue tones, they are contrasted with warmer magenta and red hot tones to make the blue stuff stand out.

So for example, maybe you make the Shadows in your pillow more towards a magenta color, thus making the folds and depth pop out. (I would love to see your pillow like this and know what you think)

Using hot and cool colors next to each other in various mannars is a common practice in regular painting too. 

I'm no pro, Just sharing what I see and would love to know your thoughts. Nice work.

SylveriaDreams

@EJtheArtist Thanks for taking the time to look at my thread and provide feedback; I really appreciate it. I agree with you on making the colors more saturated and adding warmer tones. Since these props are cool toned, I plan on adding warmer tones to other parts of the scene that I haven't gotten to yet. 

SylveriaDreams

Since my last update, I have been working on the couch, table, and chair for this scene. At this stage the table is more done than the couch or chair. I might go back in add some dings and scratches to the couch but I haven't made up my mind yet. I might leave the chair as is without adding intricate detail since most objects in the scene will be pretty detailed. The next step will be to add color and polish.

 I ran into a lot of issues when I was trying to bake maps for the couch; it was quite the learning experience. As much as I wanted to throw out the texture bake maps and move on - I leaned into the struggle until I figured out the problem. Whenever I encounter an issue I refer back to my troubleshooting notes that I keep in my notebook but none of my tried and true methods worked this time. Until I came across a polycount thread that helped me figure out the issues I was having which ended up being multiple things:

• I needed to make sure all of the hard edges were split into UV seams since I use soft & hard edge normals.
• My low poly couch was too low poly. I needed to add some edge loops back in around the curvy areas.
• My low poly model shape wasn't matching up to the high poly model enough.

Here is the thread if anyone is curious: http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1

TLDR: When you run into an issue, take the time to learn from it instead of cutting corners; that way you won't make the same mistake twice. 

C&C is welcome.

WIP screenshots rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2:

SylveriaDreams

WIP update: finished the couch texture. I've moved on to the chair texture. I was going to use the same color palette for the chair but ended up hating it. I struggled with what colors I wanted to go with for the cushions and ended up with blue. Still needs some refining though. 





Comments and crits are welcome.

I'm also streaming my morning art sessions if anyone is interested in seeing my workflow. 

SylveriaDreams

I had to put this project on hold for a couple months while worked on my art submission for the artstation challenge. Now I am focusing on finishing this project so that I can move on to anther art project. Here are my latest WIP screenshots.




Comments and crits are welcome!

Tetranome

Some of your earlier props are still coming out very flat. Notice how out of place the cushions look. Needs more contrast in the shadows/highlights. Colour choices for the magic mirror/window? are nice!

SylveriaDreams

I finished this project and I can't wait to work on my next project. Thanks for checking out my artwork and to those who provided feedback and comments.

I have more screenshots and breakdowns of the individual props on my artstation. https://www.artstation.com/artist/leigh-ann