Stéphane Richard

his image was created for the Titansgrave RPG YouTube channel, as part of the intro sequence at the beginning of each chapter. The client wanted me to illustrate an ancient power that overcomes a wizard who’s carelessly mixing science, technology and magic.

The game universe includes design elements that suggest the use of magic in a technological environment. As part of the style guide the art has to look painterly, so

TOctober 2015 developing a technique to properly turn digital artwork or photobashed images into a painting was critical.

In this workshop, I want to focus on how I use 3D and photobashing to create a camera obscura pass for my 2D paintings. Recent studies show that as early as the 15th century, the Old Masters made use of optical technologies to create stunningly realistic paintings. I always wondered how to approach a studio setup that would enable me to use highly precise references to achieve that level of realism in my imaginative illustrations. This led to me refining a process that uses 3D and photobashing techniques to create the perfect reference pass for my paintings. By isolating the values, colours and texture creation into separate steps – which becomes my camera obscura pass – I can then use it as a generator to synthesise infinite variations of brushwork and painterly textures using filters, plug-ins and painting by hand.