Making Of 'The Baroness'

References, Research and Concepts

At the end of every year we work on the studio's new personal portfolio images and for 2011 our main goal was to create stunning images that combined photography, illustration and CCI in just one picture.

After coming up with many great ideas, we decided to create a concept of an undead noble woman, which could show her glorious and beautiful past and at the same time her decay.

The first images that came to our mind were the Dorian Gray portrait from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie and some paintings of French nobles the French nobles. For the undead references we used The Walking Dead for inspiration, as it has a great make-up work (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

Fig. 01

Concept

Our first idea was create an undead woman in a creepy room, however this would not show her glamorous past and it would look too ordinary as it's what everybody imagines for a picture like that.

Working a little bit more on this idea, we created a concept focusing on two sides of the same woman: one showing an elegant noble and the other a zombie. Like the undead pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, our baroness could only show her real appearance in the moonlight, but at the same time, under the room's candle lighting, she could look young and pretty.

For the final image, we didn't just create the woman's transformation but also two different states in the room to emphasize this transformation (Fig.02).

Fig. 02

Fig. 02

3D Stage

During the photography stage, we worked on the background using the same basic lighting setup to keep the same illumination in both created images (Fig.03).

Fig: 03

To simulate the photograph's lighting we used a big, weak, blue VRaylight on the right (as the Beauty Disk), a smaller, white VRaylight in the center (the Octa Bank) and a mix of Omni lights for the candles with a small, but really strong, VRayLight plane (just like the Strobe light).

We created a very simple background containing a cracked wallpaper texture, a luxurious candelabrum and a curtain - just like Marie Antoinette reference painting.

For the cracked wall, we used a V-Ray blend material with a base wallpaper texture and another one for the exposed bricks. To make the bricks more realistic was used a V-Ray Displace mod with the image of the bricks (Fig.04).

Fig: 04



The render process took about five hours (including the five render phases)(Fig.05).

Fig: 05

Illustration

To fill the empty frame created at the 3D stage, we created a portrait of a scary, blind, middle-aged baron. This took two working days (Fig.06 - 07).

Fig: 06

Fig: 07

Post Production

This was the longest and hardest stage of this image and took about 60 working hours. The first step was the model's portrait photography cut-off and beauty corrections (hair and skin improvements).

In the next stage, we started working on the undead appeal. We have also made some extra shots of animal carcasses to use as base for simulating the wounds and ripped fabrics for her clothes and the curtain (Fig.08).

Fig: 08

After many hours working on the undead improvements, we made the lighting and color integration to strength the moon and candle lightning situation.

And here's the final image (Fig.09).

Fig: 09

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