Hello everyone, Meizi Oatmeal would like to share the concept art of using materials to create the composition of "Aurora Icefall". I mainly go to the material library to find materials related to "ice" and "light".

The aurora is characterized by blue, green, red, pink, and deep purple, and the lines are rising bands, like cloud-like gradient changes.

The icefall uses icicles, cold air and snowflakes to present the dreamlike effect of water reflecting the aurora.

 

 

In order to present a strong contrast, I placed the red-haired character I created on the newly created 3508*2480 (pixel) canvas.

The original picture is a straight version. Now we need to copy the character and place it in the right third of the canvas. At this time, we use the rule of thirds of photography techniques to place the protagonist in the foreground and complete the hem of the missing corner of the clothes.

After selecting the character, maintain the reverse selection mode so that the background remains painted somewhere other than the character.

I start using "gradient material" as the background. I usually start with blue. The center of the aperture is diagonally opposite to the character to create a sense of distance.

For the gradient layer above, if you want to create a psychedelic halo feel, select the purple aperture gradient layer and paint close to the blue light, as shown below.

Next, use the "Brush Material" for the main body of the aurora to draw multiple vertical lines along the aperture arc from the center point of the aperture. The first layer of lines in the center is red, the second layer is yellow, the third layer is green, the fourth layer is blue, and the fifth layer is purple. Draw five tones of light brushes. The effect is as follows.

I chose to draw another dense layer of green lines near the first light-colored aperture near the center of the circle. I adjusted the special effect of this layer to "82% Chroma" to emphasize the green aurora color block, and finally trimmed the lines. That’s it.

Draw a dense straight line of "brown" on the lower right side of the green aurora to serve as thin clouds in the sky.

Next, I plan to draw snowflakes of different sizes first, using the "snowflake material brush". The first focus is to draw two larger snowflakes in the lower left corner. You can adjust the brush size to about 160-200. The second key point is to compare with the large snowflakes. Select the snowflakes with a brush size of 80, and then draw an S-shaped distribution around the character along the path of the halo.

※Adjust the special effect of the snowflake brush layer to "56% coverage" so that the color blocks of the lower layer can penetrate into the snowflakes. The picture will look gradient and the snowflakes will be transparent.

Indispensable for the icefall are the irregular broken ice blocks. Here we use a "brush like glass fragments" and choose a fluorescent blue that is lighter than the background. The focus here is that the background has three obvious apertures, skipping the ones in the center of the circle. If you don’t draw, draw all other intervals. Extend the length of the lines one by one along the arc of the circle to increase the sense of distance. The blocks close to the characters are more densely fragmented.

Icicles can also use the "Quartz Crystal Material Brush". Compared with crushed ice, icicles have a harder backing.

 

I will place a group of dark blue icicles behind the character, adjust the brush size to about 150, and paint in a fan shape.

Because the color of the aurora needs to be reflected, first draw 2 red icicles and 1 orange icicle in the lower left corner with a brush size of 100. It is best to draw a fan shape of about 30 degrees with the corner of the picture as the fulcrum. Adjust the brush size to 70-80 on the half of the 30-degree fan-shaped corner close to the canvas, and draw one green and one yellow icicle. The brush size is 60. Select the missing corner of the fan-shaped part and paint the blue icicle. Finally, Resize below 50 and draw purple icicles.

 

Add icicles in two tones "red" and "green" with a high probability of aurora color behind the character. The brush size is 80, and they can be arranged in any order.

Since the light scattered by the ice waterfall is not very obvious, just like the shimmer at the bottom of the lake, I used the "water surface material brush" to create the shimmer reflected by the ice waterfall. The principle is like the moon, so that the picture has a beautiful effect.

※I adjusted this layer to the "46% Screen" effect.

The aurora is in the sky, so the clouds in the sky also contain water. When the aurora hits the water, it will also show a neon effect. Here you must use the "Light 3 Material Brush" with the "56% Real Light" effect, and at the same time In the layer, red, green, and purple clouds are drawn successively, and finally the sky blue color closest to white is chosen to draw contrasting clouds.

※The painting is more complicated, so I will briefly explain it here. I also used additional "water smoke" materials and "water vapor" materials for matching.

The brush using the "water pipe" material is used to trace the outline of the icicles, and a fluorescent green tone is used with the "100% filter" effect to emphasize the reflected light source of aurora green.

※I additionally used the "Ice Texture" material brush to emphasize the texture on the downward side of the dark blue icicles, also using the color filter effect.

Use the "Luminous Scattering Material Brush" to draw above the character, using blue-green, with a brush size of about 15-20, and a brightening color effect to emphasize the reflected light of the thicker ice layer.

Use the system's built-in "Decoration" → "Effect" → "Sequins" to lightly draw a few strokes around the upper edge of the icicle, and draw a line where the ice layer is thicker to enhance the watery feel.

The overall picture has too much blue tone, so I added a contrasting color to the sky in the upper left corner. At this time, I adjusted the brush "Light Line Material Brush" as the main color, adjusted the bright pink color, and painted the area around the center of the circle evenly, and used a brush to blur the border. open.

We can see that the overall brightness of the painting is too bright, losing the center of gravity and overall sense. After adding a layer, use the comic gradient correction, aiming to make the lower right dark black and the upper left gradually fade to white, and adjust the proportion back to a comfortable level.

Select people: Invert the selection again so that the selection area changes to people.

We need to adjust the character to match the background brightness and light source angle.

Press "Gradient" on the left row of function keys and select the same blue light gradient mode as the background. To put it simply, the head of the character is brighter and the area below the navel is darker. It is best to match the curvature of the aperture when painting. The overall layer The effect is changed to "92% Soft Light".

If you like this red-haired character, please continue to follow my TIPS tutorials. In the near future, I will arrange a tutorial on "How to Make the Hair of Male Characters Three-dimensional Effect - Red Hair".

Thank you for reading this article. Please click on the video below. This is the aurora icefall composition I drew.

Thanks to the following ASSETS material providers