Knife to a Band Night : Process

I’ve been getting questions lately about the process and concept art involved in making my “Knife to a Band Night” illustration, so I thought I’d go ahead and reveal a bit of how that piece came to be.

Here’s the illustration itself, in case you don’t know what I’m on about:

This piece started with the tagline “dystopian dance”. I had a basic narrative figured out beforehand, with a knife guy attacking a band at a club. There’s more story to it than that, but that’s the short version. (You can learn more over here.)

The sketch process on this one started with thumbnails in my sketchbook, but I’d recently learned a new way of composing in Photoshop, and that’s where the final thumbnail appeared. Here’s a sample of some of the other thumbnails I used for this series (my senior project at MCAD):

The best part about doing thumbnails like this is how freeing it is. You’d be surprised what blobs can turn into, and these were some pretty blobs. Also, INSTANT ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS. Always a good decision.

Anywho, here’s a coloured version of the thumbnail blob that became this piece:

Mmm, delicious purples and blues. With this sketch, I had the basics of where the major players would be, and some of the poses those characters would be taking. Guitar dude changed a bit, but knife guy and singer kid pretty much stayed the same.

So now I had a composition and a narrative, but what do the people look like? Ah, this requires some concept art! In other words, MORE BLOBS OH MY:

This is my concept art process. This allows me to come up with details and shapes that I wouldn’t normally think of with my “logical” brain, because it’s all accidents and blorp. My brain shuts off during this phase except to say “oh that looks neat oh next one”.

Oh, these aren’t the only ones I did. Check it:

That’s one of my photoshop documents FILLED with concepts blobs. There were several more. You can see where I got a silhouette from the giant blob sheet, duplicated it twice, then added details by simply cutting back into the shape with an eraser. Do that enough times, and you’ll have design ideas that’d take you DECADES to come up with (unless you’re a genius, which you are, don’t let anyone say otherwise).

I also created a moodboard earlier on as well, to help me figure out what sort of mood I’d want to be setting. That’s here:

Anywho, after applying my concept art to the piece, figuring out the rest of the action, and actually deciding on some background details, you get to this:

Neat! Now it’s got detail, and perspective, and some action! But wait…nothing’s modeled! Where’s the light?

Yep, time for the dirty business: rendering the forms! I’d done some research at some local dance clubs, taking photos of the lights and getting an idea of what they did in regards to colour. Jump ahead a few hours or so, and BAM:

It’s…a mess. What’s going on? Well, this gave me a good idea of what lights I wanted where, and how they’d be highlighting the forms. Red lights from the sides, blue lights from the ceiling, and white/yellow lights from the stage. Add a dozen or so more hours and you get:

At this point, it was looking pretty resolved. The only real difference between this version and the version at the very top is the addition of a few more lights to the stage, for depth purposes.

And that’s really it! If you have more questions, throw words at me! I’ll be happy to answer. Thanks for reading, and good luck drawing!