Greek mythology final week

This week is officially the last week that I am working on Greek folklore, after that it's all polish work and working on the art book which is the main part of this project.

I began this week by working on the last creature on my list of Greek mythological beasts. This creature is called a Calydonian Boar, this is the giant boar Artemis sent to destroy Calydonia an area in central Greece.

I started designing this creature by using references from life of real wild boars and sketching some quick studies and ideas.

Here are some of the initial studies I worked on, at this stage I began adding some more interesting designs for the tusks and teeth of the beast.

This page shows some more of the finalised designs for the Calydonian Boar, personally I liked the big curved tusks over some of the other designs so I took this idea forward.

And finally here is the basic final representation of the boar, I designed this creature and kept the final in grey scale then I added a quick overlay of colour.

Last week I completed the environment designs for the Gates of Hell of the Underworld. The final environment I had to design was another section of The Underworld, the River Styx. This river from Greek mythology is known to be the river which separates Earth and The Underworld. This River also leads to where the souls of the dead will be judged by Hades.

For this environment design I did a lot of research into this river and I spent a long time collecting a lot of reference images. I decided that I would photo bashing for this environment concept as I have been trying to learn matte painting.

Continuing my research I came across a river in Greece called Acheron River, this was apparently one of the five rivers which runs through the Underworld.

I used this river as a reference for the some of final designs for the River Styx. I want to get a lot better at photo bashing and matte painting and the only way I can do that is by practising , so here we are:

When designing the River Styx I wanted to make a feeling of unease and dread come across with these images, so I made the general and overall colour of the Underworld a very sickly green like that of the Gates of Hell.

The beams of light represent entrances into Hades lair and other places which can be explored in the Underworld. I was fairly pleased with these designs however I would like to make the compositions more interesting and add more assets into the scene.

Another environment which I had to design was Mount Olympus. This was more of a minor environment however as it's not a place the main character would visit. Once again I took to it with my photo bashing skills, I wasn't overly happy with the results but the ideas and designs are portrayed simply.

This design I made very space like and odd as the idea of having Mount Olympus existing on another plane of existence really spoke to me.

Another idea I had for Mount Olympus was an underwater scene similar to that of Atlantis.

And finally a rather well known representation of Mount Olympus in the sky of a bunch of clouds.

That was all for this week but next week we move onto the real work, designing the layouts, text and cover for the art book. See you then.