Departure Ceremony

This one also was a commission. Thing to be depicted was prior moments of a spaceship launch, like a ceremony or the loading of a spaceship before taking flight into the unbeknownst. I started with roughies... hyper-rough sketches to give me an idea of how it could look:

... super rough huh?

So I liked the shape of the first sketch, but somehow I wanted to explore more angles. I went and sculpted the ship:

Rear of the spaceship.

Couple of angles.

Then modeled all the context: environment and floor etc... Oh I tend to use little rectangular prisms where the people is going to be painted. So all that rectangular tall boxes represent people, I do so I can be coherent with the perspective and size. I set up lighting and shot this:

This hyper-rough sketch I actually send to client explaining my idea.

I liked how the ship looked from the rear but was not so sure of the front and sides. So I went and redesigned the ship. Sculpted another one:

This sculpture is the one I made another illustration with and posted it. Here's the other post. That old post was done later than this piece. Was a way for me to try and expand a little the "universe" client was creating. Just for kicks.

So I liked that spaceship enough and set up the scene.

Set up the lighting and the camera angle and shot this:

And then painted over it.

You can see at the end I changed the colors of the ship and the characters. I made it with super washed out colors and client was great enough to point that out. Gotta study more how colors behave. A lot more.

Final:

Full res

A few zooms about the characters(cuz I always make them super small, but zooming in they look like of a pixel art game or something):

So you have here the crew receiving some kind of blessing by the elder-wise-lorekeeper before departure. Behind the elder his right and left hands, one of both would succeed him.

Look at that pixel art elder hahahaha.

The crew, form left to right:
The co-pilot, expert astronomer and navigator.
Samuel L. Jackson aka The hard-science expert.
The captain-pilot, chosen one to lead this spaceship.
The technician, expert spaceship engineer.
The bio-researcher, she would know if something looking yummy is toxic.
The crisis-manager, expert survivalist and badass tall gal.

The guys loading the ship. Super coordinated.

Solemn watchers. Checking out everything goes according to the departure ceremony.

So that's it. Departure... to the land of zzzzzzzzz.