Winter Vacation

For my entry, I planned on doing something a bit different, especially since we don't really experience Winter here in the Philippines. What came into my mind actually whenever I remember of Winter is the Northern lights and Emperor Penguins, so I went with that Idea.

The Northern lights has always been amazing for me especially since I'm really attracted to bright glowing objects and Emperor penguins are well hella cute. With those themes in mind I wanted to make it a bit more fun. So I decided to give a bit more story. What if, in another world a cute dog would visit his penguin friend so they can watch the Northern lights together?

For my other lighting mood I decided to go with sunset. I just love the colors and drama that a sunset brings, I also thought it might look interesting on a snow mountain.

I wanted to try out a Black and White concept art first so I would better know my values and my composition.

Some initial renders

Fixed the dog a bit then I did the penguin. While doing this I also got inspired by some of Sonja Cristoph's work. As you can see I tried to use this grease pencil bit but alas it failed :( ended up using emission shaders to give that outline feeling and suprisingly it's pretty good.

This was somewhat one of the near finished renders. At first I wanted to go for a cloudy render though it didn't end that well. However, it did become a good neutral base picture for my finished renders.

Before I show my final renders here are some closer shots of the different assets. I also made an "IG themed" design of my Northern lights just so you can see how cute the Penguin and Katee are

These are my final renders. It was pretty fun experimenting with color to get my desired moods.

First was my sunset render, this definitely involved a lot of purple and orange in the colors.  I wanted it to feel relaxing and peaceful with the colors harmonizing. 

Second was my night time render with northern lights. I wanted this to look as majestic as possible, just like when a child looks at something he really likes.