The Sighting

I wanted to create a cheerful and happy scene. This was the result (go figure!) Well, at least it's colorful This image was made for the book "Concept Design II" about 5 or 6 years ago.

The huge spaceship was created in Lightwave 3D, with a very large custom texture painted in Photoshop. It was rendered against a blank background.

Everything else is painted in Photoshop. I looked at some reference images to paint the clouds and the farm. The clouds took ages to finish because I really wanted them to wrap around the ship. There were a lot of layers!

The barn and some trees were painted in a separate image, at much larger size to get the detail. They were then reduced and softened with grain and noise, and a slight Gaussian Blur.

At the time this image was created, my overriding goal was to achieve an absolutely photographic look to the painted elements. It involved a lot of painstaking effort, adding grain and noise to simulate the look of actual film. Really, not so much fun... I've discovered that simply painting is a lot more enjoyable, so I no longer pursue this "faked photo" effect in my work.

CHANGE: I adjusted the text to clarify some things