Fox Girl

"Fox Girl" is my term one final project of "Advanced Digital Illustration Course" at CG Spectrum. My name is Luis Inzunza A. and I'm from Chile. Thanks to The Rookies team for making this possible. I'm glad to show you my process, so, here we go!.

What I look at when creating an illustration is to bring to life a magical moment, an artistic experience. For that purpose, I must have a solid reference from reality and the mood of the project. When all that is sorted I focus on the most important, the final rendering, creating a painterly looking taking care of each stroke. I really love fantasy and the great traditional painters are a huge influence on my work.

Childhood, naughtiness, and fantasy were the main elements of the concept development of this project.

After the concept and the sketch are done, I prepare all the references I need. That process includes photo sessions of model, environment, 3D assets, and photo selection on the web, or making my own 3D assets with photogrammetry techniques when possible. Finally, before the final rendering, I set a 3D scene and focus on lighting and environmental effects.

On this Timelapse you can watch the full process:

Software and assets used on this project include Photoshop, Blender, Megascans, Meshroom.

Thanks for reading until here, if you really want to dig more into the details I have some more to say:

Making dynamic poses on 2D art from photo reference is a huge challenge. On this particular pose, the legs photo was taken separately. Using a hairdryer to create the illusion of movement is a good old trick.

3D assets are a great tool for 2D artists. Creating your own material is possible through photogrammetry technique.

3D software allows creating scenes that in real life are difficult or impossible. The most important part of this process is the proper lighting, playing a photography director role.

To create the character shadow illusion, a 3D object was used and set as nonvisible on the final rendering.

A fog effect was added to create a depth feeling.

The 3D renders were created and used as layers merged with the character photo reference in a final photo bashing image. Over that, linework was made to finally paint all from scratch in a painterly style.

As a final word, I want to thanks my mentor Eric Wilkerson for pushing me up to keep improving my skills on a professional level without forgetting the traditional hand stroke work. I'm excited about the future of art creation. We live in an amazing era of wonderful tools. My personal goal is to keep learning 3D and all the great tools we have at hand as well as mess around with another artist, being part of creative teams and amazing projects on video games, movies, and the animation industry. Creating works to feel proud about and inspiring the next generations to the most beautiful job, making art.