Hackberry Hollow

Glen had a lot of fun with four straight weeks of ego stroking, so I thought I would keep him on his toes a bit by posting some of the work that I’ve been doing.

One of the main artistic goals in Hackberry Hollow is to have intricately detailed environments, but because we want to keep a strict production schedule we needed to come up with an effective workflow that would save us time without sacrificing quality. When we started doing concept art we realized very quickly that we were spending more time tweaking the underlying drawings than we were actually painting, and with three skilled modelers on our team it quickly became apparent that creating relatively detailed backgrounds complete with lighting would allow us to streamline production without sacrificing the nice painted look that we like.

Glen already revealed this part of our process, but what he posted so far has been experiments with the concept of using 3D mock-ups. Thus far we are very pleased with the results, so I set out to make one of the actual set pieces that will be used to create the final art in the comic. Seeing what we could do with quick 3D mock-ups for our concept art, imagine if you will what could be done with this:

These images are raw renders without any painting on them whatsoever.

I decided to unveil the work in progress of this ship a bit early. Many of the props are not yet inserted and the interior is still incomplete, but I think the direction is clear. More images of this ship will be posted as it gets closer to completion, but for now, here are a few more shots from the main deck.

Could you imagine drawing this hundreds of times from many angles throughout the course of the comic?

When complete, the ship will feature a fully detailed interior from stem to stern, much of which is already in place. So this ship is more of a complete set than just a vehicle. I very much look forward to taking you on a tour of the pirate ship, one of the more prominent locations in Hackberry Hollow

The world of Hackberry Hollow is a very diverse place, diverse enough to include some very eccentric pirates with a stolen pirate-themed day cruiser retrofitted to include—among other things—a large crane on the main deck.