The person in the Light. Day 1 of my first portfolio piece. Critiques please!

Thomas_Smith

Hey guys, just come context on this piece:

A tiny boat with a makeshift shack built onto the back of it, this boathouse will be sitting on a scholars desk inside a lightbulb, (like a terrarium) filled with sand or dirt.

In the background, there will be a few mysterious leather-bound books and a magnifying glass. One of the books will have its pages open, with an entry on "Shrinkifying & Enlarging Magic for Beginners"(or something to that effect). There will be a light glow coming from inside the window of the shack, implying someone had been shrunk and is currently stuck living in the lightbulb.

I like the idea that this scholar came across the person trapped in the lightbulb and is going through their library of magic to find out how to save them.

Tell me what you think guys. I'd like to take a full month to work on this piece, so you'll be seeing lots of updates and improvement (hopefully lol)

I'll be using Blender and Substance Painter. 

Brian "Panda" Choi

Continue blocking it out.  SOmething tells me you can get most of the lighting blocked in early.

Thomas_Smith

Day 2: 


Didn't have much time to work on this today. Just added a few details here and there to start fleshing out the boat. Might tackle the book & magnifying glass tomorrow. 

Thomas_Smith

Coming at chu with day 4:


Started on the book and magnifying glass, still a lot of work to do, but it was fun to flesh them out. 

Ashervisalis

Maybe change your base material to something a bit darker? It's pretty difficult to view right now.

Thomas_Smith

@Ashervisalis - good point, I'll mess around with the lighting/materials on the next pass.

Thomas_Smith

Been a crazy few weeks, but I'm slowly finishing up all of the modeling. Lots of little details to go, but the majority of the main objects are now at least in the scene. 

Thomas_Smith

Super happy with where this is ending up, but something seems off. I'm half tempted to remove the bookshelves and just throw the table up against the back wall.  Any ideas?

jakemoyo

@Thomas_Smith I'd say it depends on what exactly the focus of the scene will be. Scrolling through the thread I was like "ok cool a boat scene...err..I guess a book table scene...or now a whole little reading nook scene.. " it's all good but the more you expand outward the less focused the scene ends up. So if the main shot is of the whole table then I'd say yeah leave the shelves in the add visual interest, but if your main focus is up close on the boat then it doesn't make sense to worry about the shelves. Looks good though , keep it up.

Thomas_Smith

@jakemoyo - Thanks for the input. This was my first big project so I learnt a thing or two about scope creep and making sure to stick to the plan I originally made. I think I'm happy with the level of focus that we're at now.