Friday, February 6, 2015

Exploring Froz / The Hunters - Star Wars - Process

On Monday and Wednesday I shared with you new work from the recently released deluxe expansion to the Star Wars card game, Between the Shadows. Today I have for you the third and final piece I have in the set, The Hunters. If The Hunters looks familiar that is because it is a return appearance of a piece I created for Edge of the Empire - Suns of Fortune, Exploring Froz, which I shared a year ago. Wait, it has been a year already?! Boy am I late in posting this process post! So that we are all familiar with Exploring Froz and The Hunters here is what the final piece looks like...

Exploring Froz
Edge of the Empire - Suns of Fortune
12 x 14 - Digital
© 2014 Lucasfilm, Ltd. TM Lucasfilm, Ltd. Under license to Fantasy Flight Games

Here is how the this piece was repurposed for The Hunters. It looks like the good folks at FFG had to do some cloning to fill out the right side of the card a little. I would have been happy to handle it if I was asked, but it looks good enough to me.

The Hunters (Exploring Froz) in handy dandy card form

Now for the process for this piece! As always, things started with some thumbnails to work out the over all composition and layout. Since this piece was for a book there needed to be a huge amount of bleed on two of the sides. If you look closely you will be black lines running through the piece, these were to make sure I worked in the live area and to show my Art Director as well. FOLLOW THOSE TEMPLATES! This piece was to depict a pair of explorers and their droid as they investigated the ruins of the planet Froz. Before the Deathstar the Empire would just level the surface with Star Destroyer orbital bombardment. Here are how the thumbnails turned out...

Exploring Froz - Thumbanils
© 2014 Lucasfilm, Ltd. TM Lucasfilm, Ltd. Under license to Fantasy Flight Games

Option "C" was the winner. I liked the overwhelmed expression of the Trandoshan in "A" but I guess that was not what production was looking for. With a thumbnail selected it was time to get started on the final drawing...

Exploring Froz
Edge of the Empire - Suns of Fortune
9 x 12 - Pencil on paper
Original - SOLD
© 2014 Lucasfilm, Ltd. TM Lucasfilm, Ltd. Under license to Fantasy Flight Games

The drawing was approved and it was time to get started on the painting. In just twelve steps I created a finished painting... or not. This one was straight forward, but required some edits and revisions along the way. There was some persistent issues with the elbow of that darn Trandoshan. Well, that Trandoshan was all kinds of problems since in the end I have to increase his over all size once the final was reviewed. Your favorites always turn against you. Here is the painting taking shape...

Exploring Froz - Process steps
© 2014 Lucasfilm, Ltd. TM Lucasfilm, Ltd. Under license to Fantasy Flight Games 

Not all of the edits came from production. While I was working on this piece I revisited the head scales of the Trandoshan as well as added a more complicated rebreather. The original rebreather was more inline with what you see the Jedi use in The Phantom Menace, but spiced up. While painting I wasn't sure it read well or seemed enough for the situation that the characters were in. I added the additional plate over the Trandohan's nose for added protection and visual effect.

So that you can get a better feel for the piece coming together and the edits that took place on this piece here is another of those handy dandy animated gif thingy...

Exploring Froz - Animated progression thing

This concludes the process that went into creating Exploring Froz / The Hunters. This is not the last for this piece though, I have already seen a glimpse of this piece making an appearance in an upcoming supplement for Imperial Assault. Which is kinda cool. This will be my second piece that has shown up in the Star Wars RPG, card game, and board game. Here again is how the final piece turned out...

Exploring Froz
Edge of the Empire - Suns of Fortune
12 x 14 - Digital
© 2014 Lucasfilm, Ltd. TM Lucasfilm, Ltd. Under license to Fantasy Flight Games

That is all for another exciting week on the blog, see you back here on Monday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

No comments:

Post a Comment