Sketching over the 3D blockout

For this part of the process I finished the initial blockout of the scene, and continued to sketch over the render in photoshop all the elements that were missing. I have discovered that sketching has a very particular experience to it, that it is not really exchangeable with other approaches or techniques. What I mean to say is that freehand sketching allows for the exploration of shapes without much commitment to them of being the final shapes. Added to this, because this is in 3d form, it is easy to erase all strokes made by pressing command+Z (in Mac) to find better shapes to fill the scene.

What I added in this case to the composition are all the more minute forms that add detail to the larger forms, like the columns and the main temple in sight. Because these shapes have the correct perspective in relation to the camera, it is much easier for me to continue on and add more organic shapes, or other rough strokes to add to the architecture of the scene. I am thinking that first blocking out an environment, and then sketching over it is an effective and efficient method for quick explorations of forms and composition without much commitment. Even with just a few cubes in the 3d scene, it is rather easy to imagine what the final composition is going to look like by creating a render from the camera in Blender. I would be looking from the start of blocking out the scene an interesting point of view of the camera, a perspective that would engage the viewer.

Since this is only the sketching part of the process, the next thing in line to do will be to start filling out the scene with color, being careful to group as much as possible the color values into the foreground, mid ground and background. This with the intention of making the scene easily “readable”, meaning that it will be easy to identify where the objects like in relation to each other, causing as little confusion as possible. Something to keep in mind as I move forward with colorizing the scene in photoshop with brushstrokes is to keep the interesting lighting I was able to obtain, playing with the light source in blender. The way to do this would be to have two sets of stone colors for the walls of the temple, one for the areas that are lit by sunlight, and the other for those areas that are not. The easiest way to do this is to study reference images of similar temples, like those in Cambodia like the Angkor Wat, etc.

I have left the details of the relief sculptures mostly as scribbles, since I am not exactly sure what those details are actually going to look like. For now I have left them like that to keep their final form open for change, mostly looking for their general proportion to be able to see if they look appropriate or not so much.