Servant of Creation - making of -

In 2005, social medias were just in their very beginning, Blogs and Foruns were very popular and Facebook was almost unknown to the World at that time. CgTalk (now CGsociety) was the main CG, both 3D and 2D, source of information and networking and the worldwide art challenges they promoted were very popular.

The XXVII Challenge Master and Servant happened between March and May of 2005.  Thousands of participants from everywhere, nice prizes, some very famous judges  and a chance to promote your artwork worldwide, not bad at all, so I decided to try.

One of the main rules of these challenges is that you have to post your work in progress and reach some milestones before submitting your final piece. People could comment on every post, sometimes that was very useful to see the reactions about your on going project.

I was very busy working at Trattoria Filmes, in Sao Paulo, as the art director for the CG departament, so I had to spent just my very few spare time on the Challenge.

And definitely was a challenge to reach the milestones and the final deadline. A lot of work happening at the company plus the challenge, means no sleep  at all in the last days before May, 18,  the deadline.

My idea about the Master and Servant was totally related to a very common situation for a professional artist, being slaved by his artwork and the bad lifestyle that comes with it, attached to the work in a way that you are chained to your dues  and your characters, your creations, that command you  in every level.

I took the decision to go for a white canvas background, in a homage to Norman Rockwell`s self-portrait and at the same time to have something more graphic, less based on the mood of the environment and more on the idea and in the main character expression and pose.

Talking about the character, the artist, he is not based on me, visually speaking, but my essence is there  My good friend, Weberson Santiago, also an award-winner illustrator, was my model for the pose and lighting references, as he was just about 21 years old in 2005, I made up the character looking much older based on other references for aging him.

The idea to repeat the artwork in a loop came in the final stages and I thought, – That`s gonna work! And that for me, that was the extra 10% that made the piece more solid.

I was very happy with the final decision, with the 5th runner-up  in a contest with such a high quality final entries and top level artists like Bobby Chiu, Goro Fujita, Matt Dixon and others.

After the contest  this image became my signature, my big hit, the “Smoke on the Water” that will be always in my portfolio. It was physically published in the Painter artbook (with a Honour mention),  as the cover of Digital Designer (a famous Brazilian CG magazine) and in the UK online magazine 2d Artist. Also appeared in the splash screen for the Corel Painter X software in 2007.

So here, my entire process from  7 years ago and some extras.

Enjoy

First rough sketch – Photoshop

Character study – Pencil and pen

Pencils, Pen and Corel Painter.

In the middle way I was still deciding about the secondary characters and elements but I had to start rendering out the main elements.

Flat Color Pass – Painter and Photoshop

More secondary elements defined.

Painter and Photoshop

Rendering the main character in Painter

The render for the secondary elements – Painter and Photoshop

Everybody sees a face on the pizza slice. That was not intentional. The grease stains in the pizza box were rendered using the watercolor engine in Painter.

70 % of the job done

An angry tinny character and my layer structure in Photoshop Cs2 

More details rendered and the loop idea, repeating the drawing inside the drawing.

A quick analysis of my composition.

Some Easter Eggs

A Full Res detail never published before – click to see the large version. 

And the final piece from 2005

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