Common Art - Composition

For this composition piece, I decided to go with a desert otherworld. I took inspiration from the game Journey for some of the color motifs, and a background from Oban Star Racers for the atmosphere.

I particularly liked the angle of the character looking towards their destination, even if it's a bit cliche, so I combined this with the radial composition while laying out my elements. I made a... rough sketch of what I wanted before going into Maya with it.

I put the Oban Star Racers background on the sky dome temporarily just to get a feel for colors as I laid it out. I went in deeper with specifically applying materials for each of the elements.

I gave the mountains three different layers of shade, so that the darkest ones were near the front and the lightest ones were towards the back and the focal point of the piece. I also arranged the ships to point towards the city on the horizon to create the radial effect.

With all this set up, I rendered out the view and took it over into Photoshop.

Added in moons to fill out the scene a little more and give it more of a space feeling. Added a little bit of smoke as well to give the ships motion and harken back to the radial composition again.

Used a gradient overlay on a multiply layer to bring the colors more in balance with one another.

Put on one last color adjustment layer for the final piece.