The matte painting that became a mood sketch...

So, the past year has been kinda rough, I was i a car accident and hurt my neck. I was already struggling with my self education (not learning flash animation really frustrated me) and that really threw a wrench into the works. But, I am starting to recover and find ways to work comfortably, etc. When i picked up the wacom tablet a couple months ago i didn't know i would start making so much head way. I also just moved and the new environment is really helping. All in all, things are really coming together, the journey has began...

  Anyway, when I posted this picture on CA.org in the critique forum, i didn't know what would happen. I think when you get the kind of critiques i got, though they were not very positive, that's the point, to point out the flaws in the image. So I'm taking the advice I got and it really helped. The biggest thing I got from it was a change in perspective, sometimes a little slap in the face can open your eyes. When you don't work with peers around you you can build false assumptions about yourself and your abilities. Its important to have other peoples perspective on things, You gotta keep it real.

 So, when i finished this picture, i knew what it was for, it was just to get the idea out. Its a pretty cool, semi original idea for a video game, and this image was seared in my brain. I know now this is what people call a mood sketch. That's really all i wanted out of it, to give people a feel for what i had in mind. We hope to take this into Cryengine 3 and maybe make a little demo. I still really don't know how this works, selling an idea to a company, and getting it fully developed. So, We'll see what happens.

I'm going to go back to this and really design the ship, build a model, make some alien plants, and play around with Cryengine. After that, I'd like to retry this composition, using the models, and make a really nice matte painting.

Another thing I should address about this, is this isn't what I normally do. I was trying some different techniques, mostly photo editing. This pic is mostly all cut and paste, some people see it obviously, others may not see the different layers. But any way, I still think its pretty cool, i just need to improve it several ways. I love the education of this, that's the best part, very exciting stuff.

Remember to click on the images to enlarge, thanks!