So I’m pretty excited for Godzilla 2014 and also inspired because I really wanted to make a picture featuring a monster of epic size. This gives me an opportunity to use atmosphere perspective and surrounding elements to emphasise the size. I started with a small thumbnail to work out composition and lighting and developed it as I ran into problems. There’s a big difference between the 1998 Godzilla who’s more like a leaning forward dinosaur and the 2014 Godzilla who, as far as my research goes, is reflective of the old school Godzilla design where he’s walking more upright. Originally I wanted his hands on the floor so his tail would be flung up but then he looked really small. Some of the changes I did was putting his tail down going behind a building (on the right side, I will probably lower it because it conflicts with the teeth) and I turned his head to show the silhouette of the teeth. The major focus I want is on the teeth where there’s strong contrast and the spikes on his back with the tail being a subtle thing to emphasise his size once the viewer notices it.
This is kind of a new process for me, normally I do linework where I fill in colours and shade on their locked layer or I do a sketch and merge it with background colours and blend it. This developmental process is kind of a mess but I like how it’s going, it’s important to start the picture really small and work your way in so you don’t lose track of the overall thing. Only recently have I tried to use composition, lighting, balance and contrast to make a picture more interesting and I’ve been much happier with my work since I started doing that. I don’t have much real experience in epically sized monsters, scaled or pointy creatures, or cityscapes – especially destroyed ones, so this will be challenging as always. It seems like I’m getting totally new experiences for almost every picture I do.
This will probably have very slow progress, the thing about keeping a blog of your work is that I want to spend more time doing work than talking about it but I did want to get around to tutorials and demonstrating different processes.
Posted: April 1st, 2014
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