Speedy Environment

My girl and I have been excitedly planning a trip to China. We are very excited to go and see some of the real environments that inspired the fantastic Hallelujah Mountains in James Cameron's Avatar. Especially Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain), near Shanghai which was recommended by my friend and colleague Aaron Beck as an absolute must see. You can see the inspiration clearly coming through in this pic :)

I have also been looking at the likes of Kekai Kotaki, James Paick and Levi Hopkins lately. Great pics pouring out of those guys on a regular basis. Inspired me to have a crack at a speedy "concept-art" styled piece. Came together fast when I was happy to lay in photo textures - more like I would do at work. And yes, I did the total cliche flock of birds :P Concept art baby!















Environment Mood Studies

Here's a wee update on an environment piece I posted recently. Although I was satisfied with it at the time, my friend and colleague Eduardo Pena encouraged me to take it further. While he liked the initial pic, he suggested trying new lighting scenarios and times of day with the same image. It was great advice and it inspired me to put in a little more work.

Eduardo is a very skilled artist and a very hard worker but most importantly he has a great attitude. Where I might get frustrated he sees every failure or difficulty as an opportunity to learn something. It's an admirable way to look at things, and pretty helpful in a production environment where work is discarded at an alarming rate irrelevant of any small victories you may have had in its creation :P

I have another version underway too, that I will sneak into this post at some point in the future.