Dangerous Entertainments

The main idea for this piece was to create an unusual, architectural environment. I decided to portray a Crater-City, which would have buildings looking like solid, organic structures, deeply intertwined. The story of the city and its people is born. “The city arose from the fiery lava. Strange constructions of the city appear as if growing. Their functionality and forms are programed by scientists. People settled there use energy from lava for their purpose. And their children search for inspiration and dangerous entertaining pastimes. As if risking everything, they jump from bubble to bubble and rise from the depth of the city to its top.”

The first step I made when creating this piece was to make some pencil sketches, to help me to choose a composition for my work and to determine the image scale. In addition I portrayed two similar volcanic structures with the fiery lava running away in deep canals in the background. I made the first sketches quite simple, to show just the architecture of the city and its details. I then made other sketches and concluded that 'sunset' lighting best conveyed the mood and nature of the environment. The next stage was the creation of characters and the loose placement of them in the picture. That wrapped up the sketching step.

It was quite complicated for me to paint a spate of bubbles in the scene without ruining the view of the city, so I used a 3D package to construct the bubbles and their different placements. The effect looking like trickles of air in a reservoir turned out well. I Then decided that the boy sitting on a big bubble in the foreground should become the main focus of my composition. As you can see he is clearly delighted at his predicament!
Bubbles

Dangerous Entertainments - CGSociety Reader Project

Further on, I broke my image into pieces. There were two pieces of background, five of the city, and one each for the individual characters. Working on the detailed pieces, I returned to my pencil sketches to put detail into each of these pieces. Then I scanned them into Photoshop and started to paint. The first painting’s layer was the whole image, with the big round, soft-edged brush. Seeking a necessary mood in the image, I experimented with color at this stage and as a result of this I ended up using almost the whole color palette.



	The falling shadows on the image were the next stage in my work. It was also the most laborious stage when the procces of the shape’s modeling was happening. At the conclusion of this step I worked on highlights, sun glints and reflections. Here I painted with a sharp edged round brush and sometimes with a hard elliptical brush. Downsizing the brushes, I went back to this step several times to work over all the details more thoroughly. I worked similarly on each of the characters in turn.
When I finished painting, I further corrected the work with the help of the lighting filters in Photoshop. I then added illumination from the city over the elements. I tried putting sunbeams in as well, but felt this was going too far, so they didn't make it into the final composition.
	My name is Sergey Skachkov. I was born and grew up in Kazakhstan, and was educated in architectural studies there. I now live in Novosibirsk, Russia and have engaged in digital art rather recently. About five years ago I started to master computer programs as I used to work as an animator, designer and texturer. But most of all I was really into creating fantasy worlds. At present I work as an environment concept-artist. This work gives me lots of possibilities for self-realization. My main source of inspiration is travelling; discovering new places, your perceptive borders expand and your consciousness immediately begins filling up with new images. I don't think those feelings can be expressed by words. Dangerous Entertainments on CGTalk Download Fullsize Image