Second piece done for the first round of the ILM Art Department challenge. I wasn't quite sure what to do for the second piece at first, but after rewatching the original Star Wars trilogy I really wanted to see some redemption for the droids -they get treated so casually badly by almost all the characters in the movie!
So, instead of having the droids protect Princess Leia like in the initial thumbnail I did I figured the concept would be much stronger if they stood up for themselves, and the best point in the story to pick this up was obviously in the droid torture dungeon under Jabba's palace.
After some more thumbnails I discovered that it's fairly easy to turn C3P0 into a scary murderous robot like in thumbnail C once you hand him a blaster, which is very much not what I was going for. For such a major character turning point I also judged E too subtle, and F looked too accidental. I quite liked the simplicity of both A and D, while B was great too but perhaps too reminiscent of a piece by Ralph McQuarrie in the same setting.
After some more fiddling with the composition, zooming out and shifting R2D2 back and forth I ended up with the final piece. Since C3P0 only has one facial expression available to him, I found it was super important to get his pose right so I played around with the positioning of his arms a lot. In the end I decided not to include Jabba's right hand, Bib Fortuna, in the reflection on C3P0's chest piece. While it could be a neat camera trick to zoom out from it to reveal the entire scene, it somehow seemed not to fit with the overall cinematography of the original Star Wars trilogy and felt forced.
Again, trying to mimic McQuarrie's highly efficient painting style in this piece though I think I mixed it a little more with my own style in this one. Had a great time painting C3P0's shiny surfaces, though it helped that there was a lot of reference out there for it.
1 comment:
thank you for the progress shots! really love what you ended up with!
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