I, before everything else, want to thank the Illustrator Jérôme Pelissier for teaching me the basic of colour in digital painting and the Visual Effect Supervisor Stephane Ceretti for motivating me for life in one sentence.

What motivated me to participated to The Rookies is because of what this challenge offers the possibility to confront your work with many other students from around the world. It’s been a year since I really started digital painting, and I don’t intend to stop here.

Corentin L'Hostis

I realise this project by myself, the inspiration came to me as it often comes to me, through observation. I don’t really find the time anymore to go out and shoot photography landscapes and practice framing compositions. Generally, when see something interesting, I stop to observe it for a period of time.

If there is no story there is no painting.

One day after leaving school on a Saturday night, I had the chance to photograph a beautiful sunset.

Corentin L'Hostis

So I started a digital painting representing the sky. In the beginning, it was simply to re-transcribe the colours and continue to practice myself, I had no specific topic in mind. I started to search references on the internet to find one, I think this is an essential step to establish a base and start telling a story, if there is no story there is no painting.

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My look has focused on concept art from 343 Industrie for Halo 4 and concept from Genndi Tartakovsky for Superman. I found the atmosphere that I seek.

Corentin L'Hostis

There is really nothing complex in this painting, I used a few custom brushes and I made one for the spaceships in the background. The most complicated part for me was stopping myself from adding too much detail to the clouds and let the concept gradually come to life and to keep this rough effect.

Corentin L'Hostis

In the end, I found a slightly timeless atmosphere, lost between the different layers of clouds, and the title came to me, The Hunt.

Indeed, I see the first spaceship as a hunting predator, the fact that we can’t see it in its entirety makes it look like a monster who hunt his prey. The red windows on the side, recalling the eyes of a monstrous animal bloodthirsty, the perspective and the direction of lights naturally bring our eyes to look in the same direction.
In total this project took me between six to eight hours, research included.

Corentin L'Hostis