From the Moon to Mars: Celebrating Apollo’s 50th Anniversary

This was my entry to the Artstation challenge: From the Moon to Mars: Celebrating Apollo’s 50th Anniversary

Concept:

The scene is set-up on future Mars. A set of future explorers (this turned in to a family of explorers) from a Mars colony has explored ruins of an “Orion Capsule” from the present earth. That is the basic idea. In the background, there is the Mars colony which they came. Also tried to incorporate the transportation methods from the present NASA engineering (NASA’s Space Exploration Vehicle). Their little daughter was born in Mars and she looks amazed about this new discovery of her! In the foreground there is a drone bug which works as a surveillance camera and also protect them from other dangers (such as weather changes on mars, toxic alerts, etc).

About their suits; suits has the ability to convert CO2 in to O2 (this is based on the hypothesis that in the future with the advancement of the suits like spacex suit will get humans there). That’s why I didn’t place any oxygen tanks.

Making of

3D modeling/texturing process

Adobe Dimension progress

Photoshop paint over progress (GIF)

Image details

Supporting comp (live feed of the drone)

Finally I was lucky enough to select to the adobe’s favorites list: https://adobedimensionnasachallenge.artstation.com/submissions/chinthaka_sandaruwan/

Thank you!

Mars in Future — behind the scenes was originally published in Arimac on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Idea

Few months ago at Arimac we had this conversation about an AR platform for merchants, consumers, etc. We wanted to introduce the product with a new concept. So we researched about the past AR experiences that was there. finally we came up with this AR based recruitment advert concept.

I was responsible for designing the actual paper advert & overlook the design part of the app (wynkAR android, ios). Later on the social media post designs.

Process

From the start I knew the AR markers are the crucial part. So I started the design with them. First I did some sketches on the paper according to the job positions that we gonna post. I did some study on the job descriptions before doing the sketches.

When I did the the actual drawings on Illustrator my biggest challenge was to keep it as detailed as possible (because more detailed markers will give more jitter less results) and in the meantime give some idea about the job role.

Marketing guys wanted to try different art styles to see what fits best. So I gave two different art styles to check, one with only three colors (Arimac corporate colors) and another one with fully vibrant colors. Finally we decided to go with the second option. I had to go back and forth with the design to make it perfect for AR use (to get 5/5 ratings). All together I designed eight AR markers.

Later we wanted to give some more excitement to the advert by adding a dance animation. So for that we needed a new AR marker! fortunately I had an old illustration which suites well for the cause.

In the meantime our 3D department has started the 3D modeling process of the characters that will be used in the app. All together we designed 16 different characters for each job role (one male & female for each job role). We wanted to give this fun feeling to the characters while keeping the corporate look, since this is a recruitment advert. Also for that initially we designed two different character styles. One with more cartoon look & one with more corporate feel while keeping the stylized look. We decided to go with the second option.

In parallel the wynkAR app was developed by our Game & Web/Mobile departments, Together with the UI/UX team. I did some illustrations for the app as well. And I made some email template designs.

Conclusion

Finally the BIG-DAY came! (22.04.2018) The advertisement was published on first page of the Times Jobs section (The sunday times). People were excited about this novel experience.

You can also experience the app via Android and Apple devices. (wynkAR android, ios) Thank you.

Art behind Sri Lanka’s first AR based recruitment advertisement was originally published in Arimac on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Story

During this September at the office I felt bored and wanted impress my self as a digital artist. One day I opened Photoshop with a blank canvas and I was too lazy to plug a graphic tablet. But I had a slight idea for a drawing. I started with a gradient for the background and using the Lasso tool I was able to build up the scenery that was in my head. The default brushes in Photoshop was enough to do the trick and I only used the mouse. below you can see the final result.

This spark was enough to get me going. I decided to do a “30 day digital art challenge” for my self. As I started to share the artworks on social media, people were started to like/comment and some were waiting to see the next post. This was another encouraging fact for me. I didn’t stop from there and wanted to share more insights of the artworks. I started to share the breakdowns of the artworks as GIF files.

Also I published few time-lapse videos on YouTube, which was also helpful for digital art enthusiasts

Challenges

As I moved on with the challenge the real challenge was to generate ideas. Every time I finished a drawing I felt happy and the same time stuck. Fortunately Pinterest was came in to the rescue. The real advantage of the Pinterest is whenever I searched for a keyword and select one pin, it shows the related pins under that. This was very helpful to broad my thinking process and to collect more references.

Achievements

Though out this journey I was able to improve my self as a digital artist and gain some exposure as well. One of my artworks were featured on gfx.mob an Instagram profile with over 200k followers. Also featured on a Apple music album cover. (Centralia Drive “Lights” (feat. Kyle Yorlets)

Full Project : https://www.behance.net/gallery/55913511/30-Day-Art-Challenge

Even after the challenge I did some artworks

Conclusion

Hope this was inspiring for you. If you are waiting for a graphic tablet to start drawing, Don’t wait! start now and challenge your self! When you are able to buy a graphic tablet, the experience you got without it will help you a lot.

Happy drawing… :)

Do you really need a graphic tablet to draw? was originally published in Arimac on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.