This is my great pleasure to discuss about the creation process for my latest work "Hansel and Gretel”. This image is originally created for the Steampunk Challenge hosted by CG Society. Right from the beginning, I had the intention of making a whimsical image which can remind us certain magic moments that the old folklores and fairy tales have brought us during our childhood. Hansel and Gretel has been one of my favorite bedtime stories: I can still remember how I was imagining those two little kids walking through the forest to arrive at the witch's house which is deliciously decorated with all kind of confections. I want to recreate that feel of wonder that I have experienced longtime ago with the proper visual language.

Stage of conceptualization

I have to admit that I take pleasure in the stage of conceptualization the most during the creation process. That is where all the fun ideas come into my mind and I take the time to explore the potential of each of them. I had the clear direction of doing some stylized complex structures right from the start. Therefore I started to study different silhouettes of the dwellings while trying out how to integrate pipes, screws and other mechanics details into the structures. (Fig01- 04)







In addition, it was the opportunity to explore different stylized characters since I want the witch's village to be populated with various workers, guards and habitants. I didn't only make quick pencil gesture drawings to explore diverse attitudes and body proportions, but I also took this occasion to incorporate Alchemy to my work pipeline. I first heard of Alchemy during Andrew Jones's presentation at Adapt 2008. It is a compact and handy software with which you can generate random and interesting shapes to start a design. It enhances greatly the brainstorming process as it allows "happy accidents” to happen freely on the blank canvas. (Fig05)


After the warm-up with Alchemy, I continued with a set of more elaborated colors sketches for the characters. (Fig06)