The Making of Crater Lake

Hello and welcome to a step-by-step for my latest image! I had a request to make it and since I had some time on my hands I was happy to oblige. It's been way too long since I've been doing that anyway. Here we go:

This is the geo of the 'crater'. There are some cloud shadows on top - my apologies. And actually it's a vortex. The Vortex was modelled in a popular sculpting program - my first foray into it.

Initially I wanted to have a mystical green light shining from the bottom of it but I deviated ... looking at it now - maybe I should've stuck with it.
Maybe it might be worth doing another version. Anyway - here's one early render:



Here we have the first 'real' render of the final image. There is an eco-system with some shrubs covering everything. While it looks pretty good in that resolution, my computer gave me some problems rendering it in a higher one. Should have worked with dynamic population in Vue I guess.



Here is the final render out of Vue. Yes, it looks too dark. The reason why it's so dark is that I wanted to keep the contrast without the highlights blowing out. The eco system is painted in and there are cloud shadows from a cloud layer above the camera.


This is the first step in Photoshop. I color corrected the render a bit and since I wasn't happy with how the lake looked, I replaced it with something in a lovely blue. Once I put that new water in, I knew I was on the way:


Here's the final painting in Photoshop. Cloud layers, glares and a much softened, humid atmosphere help this along. Then I 'borrowed' some birds from somewhere and it is done:


As a last bonus, here's a side-by-side of the original render and the final:


I hope you enjoyed this quick and dirty show and tell. Please let me know if you have any questions! Until next time! :)

Crater Lake

Just a little thing I did in Vue. I think it turned out pretty well. Let me know what you think :) Click on it to see a bigger version.

Forgotten Stairs

For years I used to drive by this place. It has a garage at the bottom and from the street one can see the stairs leading up to the woods. I always wanted to climb them and have a closer look. I got wet feet because there's water gushing down the steps. That path must not have been used for years and looks pretty much forgotten.

Check out the full set on flicker!

Am I?

Hi there! Sorry - no artwork again, but another song. Please give it a listen if you have nothing better to do and please leave me a comment if you liked it or not and why! ;) See you next time!

Am I? by F_6

For those who are interested:
Did this during two nights. The instrument you hear in the beginning is a Roland Juno-106, the growling, howling voice is a Korg MS-10 and, finally, the hard raspy bass is a Roland SH-101. The software I used is Propellerheads Reason/Record.