Fundus Photography – Kick About #30

This weeks kick about over on Reds Kingdom revolves around Fundus Photography. When looking up images of fundus photography I was reminded of Olafur Eliasson and his otherworldly The Weather Project, but also the people that got to experience such an event. With all this in mind I have been yearning to do some digital painting as it has felt like yonks ago since I have held my wacom pen and got lost in some jazz music while painting away. I envisioned a blazing sun from a planet where the sun fills the air in a misty orange hue – a sprawling metropolis materialised with vivacious characters and stories between them, feeling so close but far away. It was a thoroughly enjoyable prompt to flex those digital painting muscles again.

The Green Glider – Metropolis World Update

〰️ The Metropolis Renders and Paintovers 〰️

I have gone back and decided to do a paintover of the metropolis world for The Green Glider animated short. After playing about with the Oasis world by trying to adopt real world references with the render showing depth and field, focus and atmospheric perspective I have decided that I want the rest of the worlds to follow suit. With previous renders of the metropolis world the bubble cars that are crowded around Ash’s careworn car were too overpowering; even though this would follow theme with how the story unfolds it just didn’t look nice, to combat this I want the lights of the bubble cars to be brighter and more exaggerated with a bokeh effect of yellows and reds dotted around the meandering roads in similar vein to the concept art below.

The focus needs to be centred around the Ash’s car with the surrounding areas being blurred which I think can be achieved with render layers and a dark vignette to pull the eye right to our main character. A spotlight on top and pointing down onto Ash’s car will further draw the eye towards him for the opening shot. I also need to reel things back with this world as the render times are horrendous, over a few hours for a single frame isn’t ideal so I’ll have to do some tinkering.

The Kick About #11

I’ve missed the realm of blogging and all the inspiration and community driven involvement that it encompasses so I’ve decided to jump back in! While WordPress feels like a bit of eye sore at the moment (I’m sure I will understand all it’s bells and whistles eventually…) I want share the content that I’ve been up to in these bizarre times.

I thought I would kick off my new blog with a Kick About post. The kick about is a fortnightly event over at Reds-Kingdom created by friend Phil Gomm where artists from all around the world create something fuelled by a prompt. This week was the prompt of the Trappest -1e, a planet that is believed to be capable of harbouring life! Another fun prompt as always and anyone wanting to be involved in the shenanigans can do so, we would love to have you on board as a fellow Kick Abouter! You can have a gawk at the full offerings of creations by visiting this link

With this piece for this weeks Kick About I was really inspired inspired by Olafur Eliasson, in particular his exhibition – The Weather Project. I imagine a planet vibrating with orange hues against cool tones, with piercing shadows, and the ground of this planet cracking and buckling.

I initially used Maya by cracking open a simple plane and moving the segments about, then did some renders using a directional light to get some shadows and I simply painted over the render in Photoshop to get some nice contrast and paint that blazing orange against dark chiaroscuro and warming yellow sphere.