Backgrounds from Laputa, the Castle in the Sky (天空の城ラピュタ, 1986 - Ghibli Studios, art director : Nizo Yamamoto) 

The hills and skies of John Frost (1890–1937)

Backgrounds from Yōjo Senki: Saga of Tanya the Evil (幼女戦記, 2017 Studio NuT, Art Director : Hirayanagi Satoru) 

I have done one year ago Sayonara Wild Hearts video game by @simogo. It's a design lesson accompanied by an inspiring wave of energy. Don't miss this experience.  

More inspiration and references on my twitter and FB account : https://twitter.com/sylvainsarrailh & https://www.facebook.com/TohadChaos

Have a great week folks!

I wanted to show you how we created with Johanna Capelle the Leafy Bushes Cutout pack I propose on my store, by painting first the shapes with black Indian ink.

We choose to use the traditional medium to keep the “happy accident” it provoques. It’s so interesting and rich to play with these incidents ! The traditional brushes and the liquid matter provide a big variety of trails and stains. 

For these different pieces of bushy shrubs, more or less dense bushes, thickets and plants with large sheets, we first studied natural fields. We took photos to capture the plant essence we were interested in, their shapes, colors, organisations.

Back home, Johanna synthesizes and gives shape to our observation painting the silhouettes with ink. We direct special attention to the natural shape language to create expressive figures. Then we scan in 600ppp to obtain very high resolution files to be digitally processed. 

Here is an extract from the painted sheets. You can see some shapes used in the Leafy Bushes Cutout pack and also other silhouettes we will propose in a futur Pixelref pack ! 

The next step after painting and scanning is the digital painting process on photoshop to give the volumes and colors of the bushes, but I think it will be interesting to do another blog post to show you that ! But here is the result of the digital painting of the volumes and colors of the bushes made by Johanna Capelle . You can find all details, full content and an example of illustration made with the Leafy Bushes Cutout pack on my store! 

Framed by trees, the gardens of Santiago Rusiñol (1861-1931) 

Backgrounds from LUNA - The Shadow Dust by Beidi Guo (2020, @LanternStudio_ ) : https://behance.net/guobetty

Backgrounds from Anastasia by Paul Cheng (1997, 20th Century Fox Animation)

Have you seen the last photo reference pack I propose on my Artstation store ? It's a report of urban exploration in a deserted service station. It's a compilation of 240+ graffiti textures, large and close-up viewpoints of the inside and outside of the site, burned vehicule, garbage and debris texture ...  

I propose 20% OFF during the Market Place Reference Pack Sale on all my store, enjoy! 

Extract from the pack : 

More inspiration and references on my twitter and FB account : https://twitter.com/sylvainsarrailh& https://www.facebook.com/TohadChaos

Have a great week folks!

The inspiring stylisation in the composition of Henry Wong : https://instagram.com/henrywongdraws/ 

Backgrounds from Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989, Tokyo Movie Shinsha, art director : Nizo Yamamoto)

Panorama from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, 1984, Topcraft, Toei Company, Art director Nakamura Mitsuki) :

More inspiration and references on my twitter and FB account : https://twitter.com/sylvainsarrailh& https://www.facebook.com/TohadChaos

Have a great week folks!

With the layers breakdown of this artwork, you could learn the broad lines of construction I use to build that kind of crowd image. 

You’ll see that to give a good depth of field I organise the image by different grounds. To create them I play on the size of the subjects off course. Also I set the light correction of each ground and it’s interesting to insert particles or pure haze between them to emphasize the depth and to give energy and moves to the ongoing action.   

This image was done in 30 minutes using the masked photo pack “Medieval Combat Cutout” that you can find on my Artstation store. 

The pack contains 120+ HD masked foot medieval fighters photos to create your own epic battle very quickly ! 

If you are interested by that kind of assets I invite you to follow the PIXELREF feed on Instagram. It's a Photo, Painting, Texture and Brush packs ressource for artists made by my partner Johanna Capelle and me.

The bright colors of Jack Wilkinson Smith (1873-1949)

Backgrounds from The Illusionist (2010, Pathé/Django Films) :

Backgrounds from Miss Hokusai (2015, Production I.G., art director : Hiroshi Ohno ) 

Have you seen the last photo reference pack I propose on my Artstation store ? It's a compilation of wide landscapes of rocky summits and outcrops. You’ll find grassy and bare rock terrains captured from multiple points of view.  The mountains have been masked out so that they can be pasted easily into matte paintings, like this below made by Johanna Capelle. 

I propose 20% OFF during the Valentine's Days Sale on all my store, enjoy! 

More inspiration and references on my twitter and FB account : https://twitter.com/sylvainsarrailh& https://www.facebook.com/TohadChaos

Have a great week folks!

Splendid Thai ‘Harry Potter’ 20th Anniversary Edition Covers by Apolar : https://deviantart.com/apolar 

Backgrounds from Robin Hood (1973  Walt Disney Productions) : 

The colorful landscapes of Julian Onderdonk (1882 – 1922) : 

Backgrounds from Aiura (あいうら, 2013, Liden Films) 

More inspiration and references on my twitter and FB account : https://twitter.com/sylvainsarrailh& https://www.facebook.com/TohadChaos

Have a great week folks!

I wanted to show you how we created with Johanna Capelle the Grunge Wall Textures pack I propose on my store. 

Johanna and I, we work together on Pixelref, an online art resource we created for royalty-free traditional and digital paintings assets, textures and brushes, reference photos and masked images. 

To create this texture pack we took inspiration from the Ghibli style of painting in order to get the poetic and vibrating aspect that we find in the japanese animation background. 

The paintings are done using Nicker Poster Colour paints. It’s the kind of paint used by Ghibli's artists like Kazuo Oga or in other famous animation studios like Deho Gallery. Poster Color are a highly pigmented paint that requires few material to work. 

For the anecdote, Nicker is the first producer of Poster Color, from 1950 in Japan. The little company started to grow in 1963 when Osamu Tezuka's production turned to her paintings to create the animation of Astro the Little Robot.Tezuka wanted a very specific black for Astro and Nicker managed to formulate it. After that they continued to provide him specific colors and progressively Poster Color paints had been used in all the japanese animation studios. 

So to create the wall textures Johanna starts with the general color nuances. 

After this first step she does the fake roughness with diluted paint. As it's a reversible paint, it’s easy to remodel the volumes she wants. 

To finish she uses the paint without dilution to emphasize the lights and shadows. 

It's a subtle work of trompe l'oeil and stylisation to create the good balance between cartoon and realistic shape language. 

The textures we propose had been painted on a 32cm X 24cm pieces of paper, then scan in 600ppp to obtain a very high resolution files perfect to be integrated in any digital composition and give an interesting traditional touch! 

If you are interested to know how I use this textures to created artworks, you can read my previous blog article : How to give volumes and Ghibli style textures to your architectural artworks

And to see the content of the pack, you can go on my Artstation store.

Have a good day ! 

The graceful brushstrokes of Arthur Ernest Streeton (1867- 1943) 

The colorful and organic universe of Nicole Gustafsson ( @nimasprout ) : http://nimasprout.com/natural-world-1

Backgrounds from “Auto Battle Chess” opening by Andrey Egorov : http://egorov-andr-x.blogspot.com 

With my partner Johanna Capelle, we released on my Artstation store a traditional painting pack of 60+ PNG :  "Conifer Silhouette Cutout". The shapes are painted in a traditional way using black indian ink and then it’s scanned in very high resolution. 

You can use them to create quickly the base of a vegetal composition, as this one created quickly by Johanna  : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lxK9kY

More inspiration and references on my twitter and FB account : https://twitter.com/sylvainsarrailh & https://www.facebook.com/TohadChaos

Have a great week folks!

After a long period without "Week of Inspiration" post I come back and I'm going to post new ones more regulary from now !

Backgrounds from Metropolis (メトロポリス, 2001 Madhouse, art director : Hirata Shuichi) 

Inspiring compositions by Colin Bigelow (@BigelowCol) : https://colbigelow.com

The expression of depth in Vasily Polenov's painting. (1844-1927) 

With my partner Johanna Capelle, we released on my Artstation store a traditional and numeric painting pack of 60+ cut out leafy bushes. 

As a first step, the bushes had been painted by hand with black ink so you’ll find the traditional touch in the silhouette design. After a high resolution scan, the colors and volumes had been painted digitally with photoshop.    

You can use them for your own concept art : https://tohad.artstation.com/store/kMbA/leafy-bushes-cutout-traditional-and-numeric-painting-pack-60-png-free-silhouettes-custom-shapes

Here an exemple of a scene Johanna creates quickly with it :

More inspiration and references on my twitter and FB account : https://twitter.com/sylvainsarrailh& https://www.facebook.com/TohadChaos

Have a great week folks!