| Detail of Panel 24 of Chapter 4 - 2012

Discovering Ankal Aasha

ossibly the most enjoyable part of my work is the concept art phase, which I tackle before starting any given chapter of the Wormworld Saga in earnest. During this phase, I explore the vistas that the story leads our heroes through. In the case of Ankal Aasha, I already had some vague images in my head for how it would look, but only after I started to render this sunken city did it actually come to life for me. My first step into the realm of Janaka Jiiva consisted of loose color studies that I painted to get a feeling for the light and colors of the place. I had to find out which shades of green I should use on the vegetation and what colors to use to break the greys of the ruins.

After I found the right atmosphere and mood for the setting of Chapter 4, I had to go into more detail, find out how exactly the ruins of Ankal Aasha would appear. The place has a history and I had to consider this in the design of the city. I imagined the cityscape dominated by large domes and halls. The civilization that built the city in the ancient past was rich, and had a highly developed architectural knowledge. The dominating design element of that culture was the rising silhouette of the god Unurtha in front of a semicircle. This element is found in many wall decorations and is also echoed in the spires that sit on top of the domes. My first architectural sketches also included arched lintels but I discarded this later to come closer to the Khmer architecture of Angkor Wat in Cambodia which strongly influenced my vision of Ankal Aasha.

Other things that I had to design included the idol of Ankal Aasha and the room of Janaka Jiiva. For the latter, I built a simple 3D model in which I could search for exciting camera perspectives and which also helped me to construct the many backgrounds. Each side of Janaka's room has a special feature. The south side, through which Jonas and Raya enter the room, has the huge relief of Unurtha above the entrance. On the east side, we find Janaka's resting place which faces the broken ceiling on the west side where thick vines are forcing their way into the room. The north side is where the sun shines through the windows and the drapery hung from the ceiling. These different parts of the room are revealed throughout Chapter 4. I also pondered creating a 3D model for the idol but ultimately abandoned the idea. For Chapter 4 it would just have been too much work to create a 3D model but I'm considering it for the upcoming chapter which will feature the idol again.

New Characters

Chapter 4 introduced some new characters and of course the majority of work went into the design of Janaka Jiiva. However, my secret favorites of the chapter are the brothers Ravi and Som which I just loved to paint in every panel they appeared in. The name "Ravi" is inspired by the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar whose music I often listened to during my work on Chapter 4. I researched that Ravi means "sun" and I found it appropriate to name his brother after another celestial body - Som means "moon". For Janaka Jiiva (which means "father of life") I created a digital sculpture like I did for the other main characters. Again, I used it as a starting point to refine his look and to get a general feel for the different angles in which we might see his face.

Painting a jungle

Chapter 4 takes place in the sunken city of Ankal Aasha, and that meant I had to paint a lot of jungle backgrounds. To keep a certain consistency between the panels, I developed a special workflow which I used to paint most of the backgrounds. In the following example I'm going to show you how exactly that worked.

In the first step of the process I would fill the background with a basic green color and then paint all the shadows of the image as a separate layer. A rough preliminary drawing would guide me on this step. In the next step (2) I would paint a second layer of even darker shadows inside the existing shadow layer. Then I would introduce the sky into the background (3) and then add several layers of haze on top of the background (4). After that I would add another layer which would only include color information for all the parts that are not foliage (5). What was created up to this point was a scene that looked like it was lit by a single diffuse light source. In the next step (6) I would duplicate the whole background and superimpose it over the image in a way that it brightens everything up, like it would look in direct sunlight. I would then use a mask on this layer to define the parts of the image that receive sunlight and those that do not. In the last step (7) I would add clouds to the sky and between the different spatial layers of the background. The interesting thing about this workflow, is that it moves very fast since I only work on a single aspect of the image at a time and can change the intensity of haze or the brightness of the light at any time in the process. If, for example, I'd want to later change the direction of the sunlight, I would only have to change a single layer and wouldn't have to repaint the whole background from scratch.

The Bottom Line

After the extremely exhausting production of Chapter 3, I returned to a more moderate workload with Chapter 4, which is about the length of Chapter 2. However, the details of the backgrounds made an impression on the bottom line. I spent 25% more time on the panel artwork of Chapter 4 compared to Chapter 2. I also ran into problems with the prelim version and had to radically rework my first draft when I’d already entered the concept art phase of the production. Therefore I spent over 70 hours on the prelim of Chapter 4 which is more than double the time that I would normally spend on this step. All in all, it took me over 370 hours to finish Chapter 4 and I'm happy that I've finished it within the scheduled timeframe of four months!