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My recent post on five illustrators who deserve more love got me talking with Matthias Bäuerle from Season Zero. Season Zero has some really cool photo manipulations in it’s portfolio and I asked Matthias if he could do a step by step guide on one of these so you we can have a peek at his thought process. So from here on Matthias takes the post. Enjoy!

Youri asked me if I would be interested to help him out for an article that demonstrates the various steps I pass through doing an artwork. First of all I would like to thank Youri for this opportunity . As I already said in the comments I was totally speechless seeing my artworks in his latest blog entry among all the other great illustrators.

When not working for actual clients (in my case mostly bands) I always try to realize my own ideas. On one hand it’s necessary to have them out of my head and on the other hand it’s always like a journey that brings new experiences. Most of my “free” artworks are definitely influenced by literature (Neil Gaiman, China Mieville), art (Caspar David Friedrich) or mythology. I like mixing “fantasy/mythology” elements with scenery that is more contemporary which is quite obvious in “Escape from Twilight Melangery”, the artwork I’ll use for the demonstration. In the next steps I’ll explain the main stages I do to achieve a characteristic “Season Zero” design.

1. Source image selection
The hardest part doing an artwork is finding the best matching source pictures. Rarely will you have the possibility to shoot every scene yourself and so you’ll have to rely on stock material. In my case I always have the composition in my head (seldom do I do a sketch first) and sometimes it’s really time-killing finding proper pictures that satisfy my inner imagination. In this case I wanted a street with old houses as main setting

2. Cleaning up
It’s never possible to use source images the way they originally are. In this case I had to remove all urban things like traffic lights, cars, signs and so on. I also flipped the whole picture to match my original idea.

3. A new sky and street
One very important thing for me is the choice of the sky. It has a real impact on the whole mood of the image. Normally I try to have a surreal, shady sky with nice clouds. In this step I also make some first color adjustments and added some street in the foreground to have more space and better proportions (keep the “golden section” in mind!). With this the whole artwork gets more depth.

4. Shadows and light effects
Now it’s getting fun. By using some galaxy/nebula images it’s quite easy to achieve great “magical” lightning effects. Combined with selective gaussian blur you’re able to get a nice smoothness. In this step I start adding a few props like street lamps and made some corrections concerning the shadows (as seen on the buildings).

5. Extra props and lighting
I simply added a few more props like tents and caravans to bring the whole scene to life.

6. Adding the creatures
Now we come to the main actors. Like finding good source images the next difficult step is to get images that fit into the picture without messing up the perspectives. The three creatures (a gryphon, black unicorn and a manticore) are put together from different animal pictures like bat wings. an eagle head and so on. After extracting and placing them into the street I always do the color corrections and adjustments on the contrasts right away.

7. Effects and shadowss for the creatures
Correct shadows make it so that everything blends together in a more realistic way. Sometimes I use blurred shapes to do the shadows or just draw them by hand with a soft brush. I added the horn to the unicorn and added a few brushed sparks with outer glow and some blurred shapes around it. Note that the light reflections on the horse and lion are important to give the effect a more natural feeling.

8. Color balance and contrast
Last but not least we reach the “post production” stage. Using color balance I push the whole color range in the desired direction. More contrast makes the artwork more atmospheric and again you gain a lot of depth. I always try to have a reduced color range in my artworks since that gives them a distinct mood and feel.

I hope you enjoyed this short explanation and I would be honored to have you as a guest on my website Season Zero.