Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Apocalypse Now!

[Livio]

The idea behind this painting is X-Men villain Apocalypse has been hibernating beneath a desert for some time, and has just awakened to rise up through an unfortunate settlement of nomads. I mainly wanted to portray Apocalypse as a force of nature, one that would barely notice if he crushed an entire village of people beneath him. I wanted to treat this one a bit more cinematically, like if David Lean shot an X-Men film..so I added "widescreen" black bars because I'm a big movie dork. And below are some of the initial steps:

Image 1) The painting in progress. At this point the painting is super loose and dark as I'm just throwing down shadows to make sure Apocalypse will have a dramatic contrast when I eventually put some atmospheric perspective in. There's also a bunch of scribbly notes I write to myself as I work, if I happen to get ideas along the way.

Image 2) My first sketchy thumbnail.

Hope everyone enjoys!

-Livio

12 comments:

Brandon O'Donnell said...

That is really cool, man. Big and dramatic.

Unknown said...

This is pretty insane! And I like the 'cinematic' feel you attempted. I think you pulled it off really well. The image looks like a detailed storyboard from a film.

Blasterkid said...

great piece Livio I love it.

ricH.

El Snoozo said...

How F'N Cool is that?!?!!

G said...

Damn, that's cool.

Kris Carter said...

Holy JESUS that is one epic, impressive image! What is the original size of the painting? When can I get a Litho?

~Kris

Livio Ramondelli said...

Hey everyone!
Thanks for all the kind words, much appreciated.

And Kris- the painting is a digital one and though I'm not doing any litho's of it, there are going to be some 11 by 17 prints available.

Drop me a line at LivioRamondelliArt@yahoo.com if you're interested!

Thanks again, everyone!

Colin said...

Very cool piece. My first impression was that it reminded me of the god-warriors in Miyazaki's Nausicaa.

Anonymous said...

Wow, that is massively awesome. I'd love to see a gigantic full-powered Apocalypse show up in X-Men right now.

dont scoop dook in my dreads please.. said...

damn!

Anonymous said...

Very sweet dude, I totally agree with your take on him. Apocalypse = badass!

Also, the silhouettes of the onlookers are neat.

Unknown said...

This was incredible! Great painting! I am thoroughly impressed! And that's saying something, considering it's on this blog site!