For the film material I used a basic film texture I found on the internet and then edited in Photoshop. I put all my old artwork in the frames of the film (Fig.14).


When I had finished setting up all the materials and lights, I started the render session. I always adopt a linear workflow in my job and personal artwork as this helps me to find more realism, and I also save as an Open.exr file and split the renders into different passes for compositing in After Effects. For this piece I used just a few passes, like Beauty, Z-Depth, ID, AO, and also a contour pass (Fig.15 – 16).




I created all of the other elements, like smoke, dust and the background, in Photoshop as this allows me to use the brushes to have better control over the image and the final retouching.

In After Effects, I used a famous plugin called Magic Bullet Colorista II to setup a fine color correct and improve the image quality and mood. With the Frischluft – Deep of Field plugin I added a little depth of field using the Z-Depth channel. In Fig.17 you can see some visible film in the background of the image which I inserted in composite, but later decided to remove.


The final step was done in Photoshop. I corrected all of the little inaccuracies, like having too many dark areas, added rim lights and light blows, and much more. Then I painted the background with Photoshop brushes and re-touched the color mood, as you can see in the final image (Fig.18).