Concept for Landscape

Mio Del Rosario is a concept designer and illustrator currently working at Marvel Animation Studios. Mio has also worked for companies such as Walt Disney Animation Studios, Syfy and Hasbro Animation Studios.

I chose this image because I thought it was captivating. This image is not only beautiful and unique but the image speaks to me - and tells a story of what is happening in the land. However what the story is I feel is different and individual to each person and it is this I love about this amazing piece of art.


6 different 'credit card' ideas

 after asking a few people for their opinions of my quick sketches most agreed on 2 - the second one (the entrance to a city or fortress) and number 5 (the volcano)
From this I will determine which one I like more and which programme to use to complete this piece.

A5 Refined Sketch
For this piece I have decided to do a volcano erupting with a city next to it, with high-walls that would be protected by some-form of magic. The reason for choosing this is because the dark pallet I would have to use would be a challenge along with creating realistic lava. This piece I believe to be tricky but enjoyable.

Part One) As you can see this new sketch is completely different to my initial refined sketch and this is because when I first tried to attempt this I hated the outcome. And so I decided to start anew.

Part Two) because I felt that my sketch was really hard to make out I gave it some basic block colours to distinguish everything and give myself a very rough idea of the colours to use and how it should look.

Part Three) At this point I have just completed the skull rock feature, this was surprisingly tricky, as I initially thought that the eye sockets would just be black, but because of the lava coming out of them it would lighted it all up, illuminating the inside of the sockets and the skull and giving a lot of the skull an orange tint because of the colour coming off of the lava.

Part Four) I have given my staircase leading up to a bridge an outline and started to colour and add effects to make it stand out and look realistic, as you can see I still have my outline as the was crucial to make the stairs look really in the fact they had to have perspective and be neatened up for the time with lines to follow and so using these 'guides' I coloured my stairs.

Part Five) I just finished the stair case and entrance to the skull, initially I felt that the colour was too light and stuck out too much so I darkened them both, and with the use of lighting and shading made them look 3D and the stairs actually look like stairs without the use of outlines which is awesome. I have also added small detail like metal poles where a bridge could have been, but decided not to have one as I prefer it without.

Part Six) For the foreground I started by using the base block colour and used different variations of this colour depending on whether it needed to be darker or lighter. I then use the smudge tool to blend the colour together. With the use of the variation of colours I was able to distinguish different parts of the same thing i.e. rocks that stick out or in other directions.

Part Seven) For the rocks here I had to use the same method as part six however I had to be conscience of where I intended on having the lava. This meant that I had too make the areas where the lava would be present lighter and have a tint orange.

Part Eight) I have all but finished the foreground of my image, and just implemented the lava. The lava was done by refining the initial block colour and using this as a base. I then went around the edges with a light yellow colour and coloured the bit of the middle in a darker orange I then used the 'Mixer Brush' to merge the colours and give the glowing effect which makes the lava really stand out and come to life.

As you can see I have not kept to my original plan, which has another volcano in the background, and instead have opted for just a mountainous region. I have done this because I didn't want the lava from the other volcano to take focus away from the main volcano with lava and also the skull cave.
Overall the image looks very good as it really shows the contrast between the bright lava and dark rocks. I feel the glowing effect of the lava has really added to the image and made it come alive.
If I were to do this image again, I would find a way to made the individual rocks stand out more, either by using a different way of shading, or a different method to fill it. I would also add more detail to the rocks to show dips and crevices so that they look less smooth and rounded.