This was created as part of my daily practice routine. I tend not to spend too much time on these as it’s more for getting some ideas down; no sketching or work in progress, it’s just getting straight to creating. I had a basic idea of what I wanted, but preferred to go with the flow.
I started with the background, which is mostly 2D, building up in layers and using photo textures and basic brushes. I had the light for this shot done before I added the creature. In fact, there was only going to be a slight hint of the creature at first, perhaps just a hump, to suggest it was in a big holding pen. The creature itself was created using Nomad Sculpt on my tablet and then imported into 3ds Max.
The background was 90 per cent complete, so I used it as a form of image-based lighting in Arnold and then added in a single point light to match up with the lighting in the backplate. This was then rendered and sent across to Photoshop for the final paint and lighting pass. The two human characters were added right at the end of the piece using the same principles. I found some generic 3D models to retain the scene’s basic lighting and painted over them in Photoshop.
artstation.com/coldesign