Mutagenesis - Release poster (& notes)

Completed one of two illustrations planned out for this project. please click the image to see the full res! this is a poster that would be released as advertisement for the "game". there is some more text i'd like to add to it and possibly i'll fool around to make it appear like an aged print, but i'll figure that out later. i plan on posting this publicly once i release the zine. 

i also recorded the entire process over the span of four days and will next be making a time-lapse video. would anyone be interested in a patreon-only narrated version as well?

below are the thumbnails i used for the composition. i originally had a very clear idea of what i wanted in my head, so it didn't take too much fiddling. at first i wanted Io to be leaning against the wreck of the ship, but it turned out that emphasising the diamond of negative space in the middle made an excellent frame. no doubt i'll get to draw what i first was thinking at a later time, because i love drawing the aftermath to disasters and wreckages.

below is the colour sketch. i eyedropped off this (minus any filter layers) to get my palette. you can see how different the final version is. i decided that the complexity and depth of colour i wanted to achieve in the ship wouldnt be possible if i had decided to ink and cell-shade it. i've had practice painting large objects from life (as you can see in my building paintings) but before now i'd never rendered an entire spacecraft from imagination. in the end i'm fairly happy with the result despite taking the risk!

my main source of inspiration were Yasushi Suzuki's paintings for Ikaruga.

in combination with poster art for anime that used cel-shaded characters against a painted background, particularly with that almost flat blue sky and fake photographic effects. i replicated a lens flare/bloom effect by manually painting in those bright red/lilac areas around the very top of the ship and in the areas of reflected light at the bottom. this is more apparent in my colour sketch.

production on the actual pages for this zine has started and i'm making steady progress, which i'll show in the next working journal. the next major illustration for this will be the cover art, which will be different in tone but likely use a similar style, but i'm gonna deal with that later. that's everything for now, i'll try and get the time-lapse edited in the next week or so. as always, thanks for looking <3