The background image was modelled in 3D, for the chair I used a Chinese lion sculpture for the arm rests, with Eight Trigrams (a set of symbolic signs created in ancient China) (Fig.13).


At this point, I was still trying to think about what the background should look like (and it was really bothering me!) (Fig.14).


I refined the background and put more work into the lighting, but I still didn't know how the colour tone should look. So, I used the Color Balance option to adjust the colour tone; I tried to give it a warmer tone to see how it would look, but I didn't feel it worked with the character, so I reverted back to the colder blue tones (Fig.15 & Fig.16).




Because I was still struggling with the background at this stage, I got stuck into detailing work on the chair and designing the feature of the metal with some glowing light on it – making it more sci-fi looking (Fig.17).