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Hi, I'm Francesco Corvino. I'm a 27 years old italian concept artist and matte painter currently working at the Aaron Sims Company in Hollywood. Today I will show you the making of a sci fi concept. The subject is a fleet of alien starships flying over new York. Let's start.
STEP 0
The first thing I do is to throw on the canvas some sort of background, just to start filling the empty space and having a precise idea of the camera angle. I want to achieve a very dramatic effect, and I think that having the camera looking straight down and really high in the sky can be a good choice. I found this picture of ground zero that has the exact same angle, one point perspective and a great vertigo effect. In this piece depth is critical. I want to show the huge space between the alien ships close to the camera and the city way far in the distance.
STEP 1
As you can see from the beginning I decided to go for a really horizontal frame. The original picture is a square and now I have to fill the empty space all around. I just duplicate the image to the left and to the right. I'm really rough with it. There are seams and the perspective is not accurate, but I know that before the end of the concept I will put so much stuff on top of this image that it will be really hard to perceive this inaccuracies. It's really important to understand when you can avoid useless refinements.
The image looks really contrasted to me, so I lower the contrast and put a bluish solid layer with low opacity on top of it. I want to push the city more in the distance.
STEP 2
Now let's start to have an idea of the final composition. First of all I want layers of clouds on top of the city. These will give a great effect of air and altitude. Just a white airbrush with zero harness and low opacity will be ok for now. As you can see from the image, I put the clouds along the diagonal of the frame, leaving just some spots of the city to perceive what's going on underneath. This sense of directionality is important, I always try to guide the eyes of the viewer along a precise path. This helps the viewer to read the composition and to enjoy the story in a more dynamic sense.
STEP 3
And now the main feature, the ships. I quickly rough out a basic shape, something organic, that feels more
alien than human. I do this really fast, I know that going on with the painting the design will change significantly. The brush that I will use to paint these ships is really easy. Airbrush with 100% hardness, 100% opacity and flow. In the brush options (pressing F5) I have no particular options, only Other Dynamics is activated with Opacity jitter activated on pen pressure at 0%. I paint one and then duplicate multiple times. I try to play with scale, placing some ships really close to the camera and some really far. Being the shape of the ships the same, this is a great indication of distance.
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