An illustration for a contest, finished in Photoshop. In this painting, an elf adventurer is searching for diamonds inside the cave. He holds a lantern, carries a map on his back, and carefully wades through. As he looks up, he sees there are many diamonds all over the walls and ceiling of the cave. With three light sources in this painting - the night sky outside in the background, his lantern, and the shining diamonds - I painted the shadows and lights accordingly. The elf wears a pair of large gloves in contrast with his small-sized body, as well as a long braid to add to his elfin persona. I first created the rough sketch of the character and background in Photoshop before cleaning up the lines and applying base colors to it. Shadows and lights were added to define the walls, diamonds, vines and the stream within the cave. Finally, I adjusted the brightness and colors within different areas of the painting to make the character stand out.
Background design for the opening scene in my thesis film, depicting the corridor in front of Hades’ room in the Agent Headquarters. The hallway was painted with neon contrasting colors of dark blue and cyan, constituting the major colors for the walls and the cylinder lights. The symbol on the door is the symbol of Hades in Greek mythology. This painting was finished independently in Photoshop. The first step was research. I searched for futuristic, sci-fi corridor images and created a rough design based on reference photos. Second, I cleaned up the lines and applied base colors. Next, I added shadows with a soft brush and used the smudge tool to soften the edges of shadows. After that, I added more shadows to define the structure of the corridor, added lights to the cylindrical light bulbs and the decorative lines on the wall to make them pop out. The level of light was adjusted to create a sense of depth in the painting and to reinforce the light sources emanating from focal environments within the foreground. In the end, I exported the entire image as a JPEG, and made some adjustments with the color balance, brightness/contrast, levels, and curves tools.
Background design for another scene in my thesis when Hades chases the Water Bear to an abandoned street; a location where trees, vines, and shrubs grow wildly. As the protagonist, Hades is the lightest tone while the Water Bear, as the antagonist, is the darkest. The whole image was divided into the foreground, middle ground, and background. Hades is in the middle ground, and the Water Bear is in the background, with its shadow reflected onto the wall. In the foreground there are tree branches, shrubs, leaves, and a small lizard, creating a feeling that the viewer is looking down from above at the two characters. The design process was similar to that of my other backgrounds. I applied grayscale colors in the beginning to establish light and shadow. The light beam was painted with a soft brush and there is a slight vignette around the image to make Hades and the middle ground stand out.
An ancient Chinese-style courtyard design for practice. My goal was to create a peaceful, quiet atmosphere, utilizing a combination of a moon, stones, a pond, cherry blossoms, red pillars, butterflies, and a young boy. I searched for Chinese courtyards and other reference photos online and then created a grayscale rough design to decide the lights and shadows. Since the moon is the main light source of this painting, the shadows and lights were rendered accordingly. After the rough design was done, I skipped the cleanup step this time and applied the colors directly above the rough sketch. The blue butterflies were added in the final step to direct the viewer’s eyes towards the boy.