Richard Goss of the UK heavy metal band-Warpath saw my Evile Demo cover and decided to send me an email. He wanted a fiery city with zombie-influenced business people. The album name is- Damnation which I incorporated into the destroyed highway sign. This was a tough piece to do because of the destructive realism and repeating windows. Richard wanted religious and money symbols in the piece, so I placed them into the cityscape.
I added Richard's name as graffiti and the oil drum has George W. Bush's name in blood (but it's way too small to be seen) as a unseen in-joke and perhaps a bit of a political statement.
Though it was enjoyable to create, color-wise, this was not a fun piece. Almost entirely composed of warm colors, I did add some greens in the car as well as purple and blues in the clothes. Of course, airbrush mode provided most of the smoke and mood of the piece.
We talked about having the gentlemen a skull-head as well as a totally rotten zombie with a gas mask, but I think the subtleness of his expression and eyeless contact with the viewer works and the gas mask has been used a lot in past work.
The hardest part of the images was getting the windows and the lines in the building even, as well as the fire actually looking to consume the structures. The fun part of creating the piece was the dollar sign on the skyscraper (obviously symbolizing American greed (Yes, I am a proud American, but also see the greed, and careless nature of much of our government, institutions, and laws).
The piece is not huge, but it is over 2400 pixels wide. Design-wise, I used the two figures to appear to `move' the church over to the right side of the picture so it wouldn't be centered. The steeple/cross brings the viewers eye to the band's name. Like most of my digital work, I painted this image like a regular acrylic, background/sky first to set the mood, lighting, then the mid-ground and the foreground. I rarely use layers, but on this image, I used them to keep the figures separate, so I wouldn't have to keep painting the edges. Of course, it all started with a rough sketch in my sketchbook.
As for Ricard Goss, he definitely knows what he wants, but is also flexibile to new ideas; that equals a cool client.
