Hollywood Reporter - The Lost Year cover illustration

[AJ Jefferies]

Hello! Long time no post

Here's a cover illustration I did for the Hollywood Reporter a few months back.



Turnaround was pretty tight on this, I had 4 days from initial concept sketch to final artwork, so the camera, canisters and clapboard are all stock models. Most of my time was spent sculpting the ice block in Zbrush and tweaking the shaders. I scattered droplets of water over the exposed elements using tyFlow, I also started working on a version where there was trapped air around the elements inside the ice (using tyFlow's incredible VDB functionality) but sadly I just didn't have time to explore that route.

Cheers!

AJ

[fixeighted]

Ooo...a freeze-frame

Very cool (pun intended) image, as per usual

[leo.surrealismo]

impressive! could you explain a bit about the ice shader?

[AJ Jefferies]

impressive! could you explain a bit about the ice shader?

Of course! It's incredibly basic really, refractive with a little fog colour and some grungy maps the break things up. Over the years I've found that lighting and environment are the key to make refractive objects look nice!

[Karol.Osinski]

I love the poster and overall presentation! Well done on the glass material. I agree that lighting is extremely important to make glass look real, I often use refraction + glossiness pass on the top of it in PS to boost it.