Samurai Hunted
Enter Cyberpunk
As a long time fan of the Cyberpunk genre, I've been waiting and dreading the moment I made a piece inspired by the theme. Cyberpunk pieces are some of the most incredible digital art pieces you can find online. Taking Sci-Fi to the extreme, the setting is full of neon lights, cybernetics and skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. Advertising is rampant and corporations control the world leaving the rich to be mega rich and the poor to be even poorer. The rich live at the top of sky high buildings unable to see the poor living down on the streets blocked by clouds and concrete. I could go on and on but in essence, cyberpunk art are like intricate time pieces. Each tiny cog moving another. And then hundreds of movements later, you have the watch in full. Similarly, cyberpunk is all about details, with each detail collectively adding to the final piece. This piece had the most assets, layers and groups I've ever had in a piece. Everything needed to be added, 'cyberpunked' and edited to fit the image. All in all, it took about 10 grueling days to make. Luckily I had expected this but that's not to say it still wasn't driving me crazy at times, staring at the same piece day in and day out. The end result though, was me being able to keep to my original idea and coming out with something I'll look back at proudly. Especially since I didn't even have a sketch for this piece. The effort and time put into this project was crazy but I think the final piece is something quite nice if I do say so myself
IDEATION
Inspired a lot by the video below, I wanted to do my take on a samurai in the cyberpunk setting. I also wanted my samurai to be hunted and on the run. Lastly I wanted it to be a bit more aesthetic by having the picture be slightly tilted as it was my first portrait piece. As such, I needed the following:
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a person with his back to the camera
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Japanese outfit, mainly kimono
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a sword
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headwear including a mask and straw hat
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city Scape with tall skyscrapers
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multiple logos of recognizable brands
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cyberpunk style ads
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cyberpunk color palette of blues and pinks
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neon everywhere
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atmospheric effects
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holograms and billboards
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flying cars
assets used
sketches
unlike every other piece i've done, No sketches were made for this piece. I based everything purely on the image in my head. Basically I winged it.
Drafts
Before i start, I really want to point out that each element of the samurai was made individually. As seen above (Assets), the subject is literally in his underwear and I put each sleeve, the main kimono, and the rest of his outfit together element by element. I'm super proud of it which is why I wanted to show it off specifically
Draft 1: I was actually super proud of this attempt. the elements all came together well. of course while looking at the other drafts side by side, this one looks very basic. but at the time, i was really happy with it. each part of the samurai was made individually and even though there were more parts to him, as a first draft, this was a solid attempt.
Draft 2: Main element added was the wanted poster. I learnt some pretty cool techniques involved in it which was awesome. Other than that, I changed the colours of the foreground buildings. Firstly, I made each of the the orange lights pink. Next, I painted over each apartment giving them blue lighting instead of yellow. Blue and pink are the classic cyberpunk colours and after doing lots of research into the genre, I knew I'd have to change a lot of the colours to match the theme. Lastly, I removed the sky and added a city in the background. Cyberpunk means skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. A sky looked very out of place in the picture. Fun fact: the background city is actually singapore. I also did some colour corrections to make the cities match better
Draft 3: Now it was time for the most tedious process. individually adding ads, billboards and holographic commercials all over the city. It wasn't as simple as copying and pasting ads. Firstly, the ads had to match the cyberpunk genre. Next they had to be turned into electrical billboards or holographic signs. Then, they had to be implemented into the cityscape. And Lastly, their colours and lighting effects had to match. When it comes to billboard ads, each ad has a custom made pixelated screen effect on it. When it comes to the holograms, same concept applies. I couldn't just copy and paste effects from one to the other as each ad fit in differently into the city with different sizing and lighting for each. Every ad had anywhere between 5 - 10 layers on it. Not effects, Layers. Each layer had multiple effects.
Also changed each apartment colour in the background city areas as well as added the sword and a clenched first for the samurai
Draft 4: Along with the addition of even more ads, I decided it was time to ad atmosphere into the piece. I divided each part of the city making it an individual layer. I named them "Foreground", "Midground", "Before background" & "Background". So i had 4 different cities to work with essentially. I did this to ad fog and lighting between each city so it looked as if there was street light coming between each layer. I really loved this touch as it brought so much depth into the cityscape. It was it 3d instead of a 2d image. each individual part of the city also had custom made colour corrections not only to match the theme but also create more depth. Objects closer to the foreground are not always light the same as objects towards the background. So each city part had to be manually changed. Overall, the piece was really coming together and the atmospheric effects really brought so much depth into the piece.
Draft 5: Added the remaining ads and some more atmosphere and colour correction. put in a fun detail of a flying care chase happening in the foreground. Managed to make it look like the samurai was holding the sword in realistic way. Honestly, with a few more touch ups, this piece was ready to go.
however, something really interesting happened between this draft and the final draft. I started interning. A large part of my job is lighting things well and just one week into the job, I realised the colours of this image needed to pop way more. comparing this to the final image, you can see the leap in lighting and colouring which made the aesthetics jump from 0 - 100 in my opinion. If not for the shear coincidence of starting a job which taught me loads about lighting, this piece would have come out looking drained and dark. so it was a very happy coincidence which i gladly took
if i were to harp on about everything i did to bring this piece together, this blog would be as lengthy as a newspaper. But i only mentioned parts that i think deserved more credit. The truth is, this was the hardest piece i have done so far and will be that way for a while. this piece took 10 days and was a really ambitious project. which is why when i say i'm proud of it, you have no idea. this blog was already a long read so ill keep the outro short. I'm thrilled i got to live out my fantasy of making a cyberpunk piece. it's the whole reason i wanted to create an art account. it was so that one day i'd be good enough to delve into the cyberpunk genre. that day came way faster than i thought which makes me super proud i was able to do it well. can't wait to outdo myself during the next crack into this amazing genre. keep you're eyes peeled for that one!