Anatomy Of A Pinup (Patreon)

I thought it might be fun to do a behind-the-scenes look at my process for designing a character and pinup poster, and this one went through a few more alterations than usual.

I was brainstorming for more Undisputed Universe characters to flesh things out while watching The Hunt For Red October for the millionth time, and thought a soviet-era superwoman would be an interesting addition. I had recently picked up a bodysuit that would be perfect, and pretty quickly had the character done:

The hammer was from a medieval weapons pack and not quite what I wanted, but I thought it would do for now. Next, I picked the camera angle and lighting for the pinup, and made the initial render:

Which I then took into Photoshop, added some smoke clouds in front and behind as well as a lighting overlay, then put the whole thing through the Camera Raw filter to adjust the contrast, color levels and sharpness:

The final result was pretty good, but there were a couple of things that bugged me. The first was the hammer. I really wanted something with more of a modern feel, so I opened up Blender and made one:

Then I swapped out the hammer, added some lightning effects, changed the lighting setup, and added a smoke prop that would be part of the render itself instead of added later:

(Why didn't I make the smoke part of the render in the first place? Because it take a LOT longer to render. For a single image like this that's not a big deal, but in a comic of multiple pages it could add up to days of extra render time. Also, the smoke in the render would react with the lightning in ways that would be harder to mimic in Photoshop, so I felt in this case the extra time was worth it.) Back in Photoshop, I added a few lighting effects to the new render and took the whole thing through the Camera Raw filter for the final result:

And there you have it. I hope some of enjoyed the peek behind the curtain!