"Listenng to the Dead"
Commission for the BBC listings magazine Radio Times, to accompany a BBC Radio 4 drama featuring a victorian inventor who creates a machine to hear the voices of the dead. The brief suggested a 'Steampunk' reference could be used given the era, but still keeping my usual working method. So I set about creating a fantastical head piece that when worn looks like a hybrid man machine. A superb theme to work on and explore. The deadline was quite tight - render time being a day and a half only.
As soon as the basic sketch has been approved, its over in to Illustrator where the character and props are put together.
In Photoshop the image starts to come alive when all of the collaged textures are incoorptated and overlapped with the illustrator imports. Many textures are used, (and many rejected) when playing with the appearance of the character and the listening machine, keeping it fairly simple as the print reproduction size of the images is going to be quite small.
Three different versions were presented to the client, each with subtly differing backgrounds. The blue background image was eventually chosen as it seemed to contrast and push the figure forward more than the other two, working a little better on the repro size...
The image as supplied to the client and how it featured in the magazine...
Finally, a very short video showing the key stages in the process...
(-: Many thanks for taking the time to look through the project :-)
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