Making Of: 'Louis in the Tree with Simon' by chainsaw|clausen (+Video)

Hey Steemians,

today I want to show you how I've created my last artwork 'Louis in the Tree with Simon'.

Idea or inspiration:

I'm often on Pinterest for research and getting some inspiration and motivation. And often it ends up with a lot of frustration because there is so much stuff from many very talented artist. (My personal concept sketching skills are very rough ;) Anyway, I've found a very cool owl sketch done by Jennie Hoffer, while I was looking for some completely different. :D And I thought to myself "that's a good exercise for a speed modeling". No sooner said than done! I've stared modeling the owl and captured the process on video. (...for the first time, so please be lenient with me there isn't an audio track) While I've created the owl in 3ds max I've listened to music include some Beatles tracks and so I've got the idea for the title and scenery.

Modeling:

As said I captured the whowl (pun!) process on video. You can watch it right below. Two hours of modeling compressed into a 10 minutes video.

A day after finishing the owl I made some quick changes on the feet and beak and bring her into pose. I've copied the owl and brought the second one also into pose.

Last but not least I created two different tree branches with leafs and snow and added to the scene. (The process of creating the tree branches will be topic of my first tutorial here on steemit.)

Texturing:

Quick and dirty! I've unwrapped all 3d objects. For the owls I only added some colors. No bump map no structure. I've played around with those things but didn't found a good way to get a acceptable result in a short time period.

The tree branch, leafs and snow textures are a mix of painted color and bump maps and procedural maps. Was done really quickly because I know-ed the most of it will get blurred in the finished image.

Lighting and Rendering:

I used the good old 3-Point lighting. For a bright winter day outdoor scene it fits perfect. An ambient light with an wintry HDRI map (A), a key light as warm sunlight (B), two cold rim lights (C) and a fill light from the bottom to simulate the reflecting snow(D).

I used the Mental Ray render in 3ds max 2015. The depth of field was directly rendered into the image.

Post-work and final Image:

I've rendered the whole image in one layer and just added and additional snow layer in Photoshop, painted the highlights on the eyes and did some color corrections. That's all. Sometimes nothing else needed.

(Right-Click on the image and click 'View Image' for full resolution.)

I hope you've enjoyed the Making of 'Louis in the Tree with Simon' and thank you for reading.

Feel free to comment, ask if you have questions, upvote and share.