In order to get working quickly, i wanted to lay down some initial concepts that i could move on from. Nothing has to be too spectacular at this point, but just good enough to work from and refine later on. That said, there are some techniques i would like to try out before it comes to fully working through images at a later stage and turning them into final pieces.

For my first concept i have chosen to work on a piece i had originally intended to be a portfolio piece that i was trying out a few new approaches with. This concept has the illusive figure i wish to include in all my pictures, as well as a sense of adventure and/or mystery, which i think is a big selling point to the piece. Not only does it add more depth to the piece, but it fits well in the restraints of the brief; Who will i be? As if the man in the pictures is looking for an answer almost.

My original line drawing sat like this;

My intention was to create a sort of opening in the cave, surrounded by seemingly ordinary things, allowing for a contrast in focus as well as a mysterious element that lead away from the normality of it's setting.

As with many of my concept, i began by blocking in colour using the polygonal lasso tool to allow for each element to be on a different layer and allow for much more fluid manipulation of colour and value later on. The colours all slightly vary to show depth and contract in the elements. From them on shading becomes the main part of the work and finding a steady grounding for the colours to flow through.

It then came to a point where all the main colour profiling, and fleshing out of 3D elements was finished. From sketch, to full colour, it became this;

At this point many of the colours look similar, and there is no real interaction with light. From this i picked sections of the trees and applied curves from the adjustment layer panel in order to achieve more depth and realism to the trees in the image.

With the trees having more interaction with the light, i wanted to play with the background, seeing in what ways i could create more mystery and depth in the piece. I have heard of texturising certain parts of images to make them look realistic, but never fully utilised the process. I had a look through a few sites promising great textures to use for photoshop images, and came across on i thought may work well for the caves, and one for the floor. After a while of playing with the saturation levels and the colour profile i had something that looked fairly realistic. 

From here, i again played with the curves adjustment to add more depth. Selecting the areas to darken i'd use the free lasso tool to create the shapes, then add a gaussian blur to give a more realistic effect.

With the depth of field sorted, i wanted to add a little more scale to the picture and accentuate the figure in the middle, presumably searching the cave. Using the linear dodge brush with a very low opacity soft brush, i applied light both in front and behind the figure. This creates an eerie glow, along with a main light source.

To accentuate this addition further, i decided to add even more shade around the area of the glow. Again, using curves on the background to achieve this, using the circular marquee tool to pick my area, inverting it, and shading.

With many of the main features sorted, i really wanted to apply some sign of light through the branches of the trees. Alluding to perhaps sunlight through a small crack in the trees, or through a stone walkway through which the figure had been. I'd never approached creating light before, especially in this way. I decided to achieve this with a block of light (being the light source) and flaring it with the lens blur, to the point it became a small beam. This became the final addition to the piece, and is now ready for consideration to put into Cinema 4D.