The Swindling Serpent
A few months ago I was contacted by a Folk band called The Bards, from Maryland US. They reached out to me as they had seen a piece of work I had done called Tavern in the Woods and asked about the creation of album artwork for a new album they were working on (called – Tales from the Swindling Serpent) I was glad to accept the commission and it is the kind of work I really enjoy doing.
Gathering the Key Requirements:
The requirement was to provide a static scene of a medieval port with the focus being on an old tavern called – The Swindling Serpent. This requirement was discussed over several emails and following this I wrote up a key checklist of what was required for the scene.
Key Vision and References:
After the key version for the work was clarified, I also asked for and was provided with some great examples and reference images for the kind of style and layout the band was looking for.
Blocking Out the Scene:
After this I went on to create some simple block outs of the scene. I did this primarily using Blender and some simple shapes for buildings, mountain meshes I had created using Gaea and a few other props.
Below you can see some different options I provided as a starting point for the scene. This part is super important, it allows for all involved to get a solid gauge on what will be worked on and prevents any misunderstandings.
Of course, over time the scene and shot composition can evolve and change, but this baseline is very important. It doesn’t have to be done in 3D, it can also be sketched out using paper and pencil or done via something like photoshop. For myself though I will always create a 3D block out to start with.
Building the Tavern Scene:
The preferred blocked out image was chosen and after this I started work on the scene. Unfortunately I didn’t record a lot images of the scene as I created it! It’s great to be great to see the progression of the work, but I did capture a few a I progress.
To start with I create the landscape and placed the mountains, then I placed the tavern and some of the docks. The mountains came out looking really realistic and I created the meshes in Gaea and used a fairly simply UV projection process in Blender to map photos of a mountain to the meshes.
Initially the scene was going to be at around sun set, but after further work having the scene at night time became a more fitting environment.
The Tavern Sign:
As part of the work the Tavern needed a sign of a snake around a dagger or sword. The initial image was created using AI (which is a whole different topic – as many people will know). But it wasn’t quite getting the result that was required and had some weird artifacts as well. So I isolated some of the elements, created a render of a dagger (using Blender) and then joined them together in photoshop.
The result is below and after not a lot of work, it came out looking just as was required and also a great addition to the artwork scene.
Finalising and Adding Detail:
After several rounds of feedback, and adding many more details, including further buildings, props, some boats, and the most amount of characters I’ve ever added to a scene.
The characters were created and dressed using Character Creator (which I found to be a great program and has often been the saviour when it comes to creating creators from different periods of time).
I finished off the scene with a lighting pass, where I refined the lighting, added a moon, and also added a touch of glow to the tavern to make it more the focus of the scene.
After rendering the final image was further refined using Adobe light room.
The whole scene was crated in Unreal Engine. Using this program I had access to many different models and props, an amazing real time render engine, which made editing the scene and producing renders a seamless and efficient process.#
Final Album Artwork:
To produce this artwork, I worked primarily with John Bachkosky from the Bards, who was a great guy to work with, provided clear and concise requirements and was happy to discuss the best approach to creating the artwork required.
