The Workflow Behind an Indian Architecture-Inspired Scene

A Concept Artist Marceau Nakayama shared a breakdown of the Pearl of the Silkroad scene and talked about the importance of having the story behind projects.

Introduction

My name is Marceau Nakayama, I'm a freelance Concept Artist based in France. I don't have a degree in art so I've been mostly self-taught. I'd been working as a chef in hotels in Paris since I was 18 but I really wanted to turn my art hobby into a job. So, I enrolled in online mentorships with amazingly talented artists such as Emmanuel Shiu and Christopher Schiefer from CGVerse; both helped me tremendously.

It has been only less than a year since I started working as a freelance Concept Artist; I've worked with such companies as One Pixel Brush, ReelFX, Parallax Studios, NetEase Games. I am looking forward to sharing the various projects I've been working on once they are announced.

Inspiration and Goals

I've always wanted to try to make a larger scale environment piece. I got inspired having visited Orsay Museum in Paris, besides, the Orientalist painters have always been a huge inspiration to me. So, the theme I picked was almost a natural choice and Mughal architecture has always fascinated me. I started with some quick scribbles in Photoshop to get some ideas for the composition and mood, I tended to keep them quite rough, so I could have the freedom to make iterations until there was something that I thought worked.

Composition

I think it goes without saying, Quixel Megascans is a big game-changer for landscape creation. I've assembled and modified some of the pieces to create larger chunks of terrain to make the kitbashing process easier. Blender is a great tool that I've been learning to use for the past few years and the community is awesome. Whenever I'm stuck with something I just search it online and there is always a tutorial or a forum that has the exact information I'm looking for.

Getting Started

I always start a project by gathering a bunch of references, this saves me a lot of time later on. I try to break down my scene into different components then decide what pieces should be modeled. I'm not much of a technically savvy person so whenever the Shader Nodes count starts going too crazy I try to find quicker alternatives. I've created the assets using a mix of photo textures and more conventional 3D modeling.

Assembling and Rendering

During the creation process, I always go back and forth between 3D and some notes that I write for myself in 2D. Whenever I feel like I'm stuck creatively while working on the scene, I render it and open it in Photoshop, and just do paintovers to plan the next steps ahead. The amazing works of legendary Matte Artist Yannick Dusseault were also a big inspiration, the way he does lighting and atmosphere is fantastic. Besides, films are generally a great inspiration to me when it comes to figuring out the lighting in my scene.

The final scene was rendered in Cycles, the lighting was mostly handled by the HDRI and a few small lamps where they were appropriate. The far background was mostly 2D photo plane cards. Since the crowd was far from the camera, I added it in Photoshop with a mix of photos and brush strokes. The final touches in Photoshop are usually all about adjusting the values and color tone with some broad strokes and RGB curves.

Conclusion

I initially started this project because I was looking for a change of subject and tone from my usual works. It was the first time I tried to make an environment of this scale in a 'matte painterly' style so the whole process was challenging. But these are the types of projects that I like the most because I know I will have learned something by the end of the process.

I think if there isn't a strong motive for a story at the start of a project the final result will never be as satisfying to me. All my other projects start with an urge to tell a story, this project was started more as a practice I could say. As for the completion of the project, it was done during my free time between work, I would say it took me about six or seven days. Next time I'd like to focus more on storytelling and less on the technical aspects. Speaking of which, I have a really fun and more story-driven idea that I've been dreaming about as a follow-up to this project.

Marceau Nakayama, Concept Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore Nikitin

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The Workflow Behind an Indian Architecture-Inspired Scene

Introduction

Inspiration and Goals

Composition

Getting Started

Assembling and Rendering

Conclusion

Marceau Nakayama, Concept Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore Nikitin

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