Karvan Swara

I’ve always been a sucker for Martial arts. I remember when I was a kid my dad used to put on Bruce Lee movies and wouldn’t allow me to watch it because he said he’s a bad influence. It then really became something of a huge scale when my folks and I went to turkey to visit some relatives. We were all watching this cheesy kung fu movie with hilarious dubbing, but I noticed that it was different from all the Bruce lee movies that I watched behind my dads back; in this movie I remember them being able to leap ten feet into the air and gliding. Naïve that I was, I believed that it was possible. Ever since then I always imaged what it would be like to perform such an action. Naturally my heart was broken when my brother told me that they’re able to perform such leaps because of wire crews and such. The strange thing is that I’d like to believe it’s true. I’m one of those kinda guys who dreams of having powers from the marvel comics….being able to fly, be invisible, have psychic powers etc. But that’s what being an artist is about; it’s about using your imagination to its full extent to create what you see or dream about.

I’m quite the fan of Andy Seto and Wing Shing Ma. When I look at their comic books, it’s like a reflection of my imagination; warriors fighting over revenge, leaping into the air, running over water, performing a million sword strokes in an instant, animal styled fight play, using energy fields etc. It’s sad, but that what I like and that’s what my character illustration feeds upon.

I’m fascinated by David Finch who is an illustrator. He has a strange style of illustrating characters by adding highly visible muscle fibres, veins and dirt to the subject that make it feel electric. He has a clear understanding of the human body and is able to utilize it to his own advantage, hence the overly muscular figures. I’m also greatly interested in his way of adding shadows and lines. He doesn’t use mid tones to shade in the subjects; he simple keeps the dark, dark and the bright, bright. 

After studying his work I emulated his technique into my characters.

I had an idea to create a destructive cityscape in smoke and fire after looking at the ‘Dark knight’ poster. I went off and took a few photos that I can work with, and this one was perfect. It has the right composition to begin with; the buildings draw the eye to the far right of the photo, and this is where I wanted to assemble the crumpled buildings.

In the matte painting, I removed pedestrians, vehicles, trees and the lights from the traffic. I then proceeded to paint over the glass to make it appear broken. The same goes for some parts of the buildings and pavement. I then continued to add buildings at the back ground to create the cityscape and to also put them in the same perspective as the photo. I further enhanced the destructive appearance of the buildings by matting out parts of it out and painting loose cables and pipes over it. I continued to add the fire and smoke but not so that it over crowds the painting. It’s quite difficult to add just the right amount to any painting, because one can sometimes add too much detail or too little. In this case I wasn’t afraid to lose some details because it then brings out the details of others. I finally inserted an adjustment layer to create the dark mood and another to bring out some parts of the fire and bounce light from the fire on the smoke. I was quite pleased with the result and will be looking forward to doing more in the near future.

In this matte painting, I took a different approach. Instead I had a concept painting already done. I then wanted to do a matte painting of that concept art.