Project
•
LEGO ADVENTURE
Year
•
2023
Roles
•
ARTIST/COLLABORATOR
Synopsis
•
Project Exploration
Process
•
Wandering Castle
This concept was made to help illustrate the main themes of the project - an optimistic, wonderful world with the promise of adventure around every turn. Pulling from inspiration including Howl's Moving Castle, Final Fantasy, and D&D I wanted to depict a group of adventurers enjoying their pastimes while in in transit to their next adventure.
After some thumbnail explorations, the most fitting one was used to guide a very simple 3D block-in using Blender. Characters were modeled and then posed with parenting to keep things simple. The Minifig is a CC0 license model from Big Planet Games available on Sketchfab which comes with a rig.
The scene was lit using the sky texture node and a sun disc, rendered out using cycles. To help with masking during the painting phase a grayscale z-depth image was used to help select elements at similar depths by controlling image levels. The compositor nodes used to make the depth image can be found below.
Using the rendered Zdepth image to quickly mask out and organize different areas of the image, colors were blocked in and the painting phase began.
Using a combination of painting and photobashing the image was iterated on and brought to completion.
Process
•
Log Town
A similar process was used for the Log Town image, although this time more time was spent in 3D to create a more useful block-in, including materials, photos and geometry nodes for the houses. Characters were modeled then rigged and posed using Rigify, except the Minifig which is a CC0 license downloaded from Sketchfab (Thank you Big Planet Games).
The houses were created by modeling a single house and then using geometry nodes to distribute instances across the interior surface of the log by painting a density map. All the steps needed to replicate this technique can be found in Blender Guru's infamous Doughnut tutorial series. The node setup is included below.
Simple materials were then assigned to the models, lit, and rendered. A fog volume was added to render out a hint of volumetric lighting. To help with masking during the painting phase a grayscale z-depth image was used to help select elements at similar depths by controlling image levels. The composite setup is included below.
The remainder of the image was just painting to finish.
Credits
•
Mike Ackerman
Selected Works
Ghost of TsushimaArtist
The FieldIllustration
CHROMEArt Direction
AstraArt Direction
Cabin in the GladeArt Direction
Mario vs. Donkey KongConcept / UI
Beyond TokyoArt Direction
AtlasConcept Art
FaeriaIllustration
StudiesPersonal