There are many variations and interpretations of the ‘Green Man’ symbol, mostly characterised as a mans head or skull with plants and other vegetation sprouting in and out of the eye sockets, mouth, nostrils and ears. The Green Man is generally considered a representation of the cycle of life or rebirth of nature when spring time comes around.

We have a few concepts which are focussing on bringing various Green Men to life in the form of figures made from trees, rocks, and other natural materials. Some are inhabited with building, mysterious doorways and cave-like entrances to the inside of these tree-creatures we dubbed ‘Treople’.

In the following video you can watch us creating concept art for a Green Man in our game, sped up x16. If you really want to watch our drawing and digital painting videos at normal speed, check out our past Twitch.tv broadcasts.

We lightly sketched out the overall shapes, then added some detail to parts we considered of focal importance. Following this we did some rough tonal modelling to get a feel for the foundational 3D volumes. After this we worked into these larger volumes, adding detail and texture, and picking back some of the light with a trusty putty rubber.

Once we are generally happy with the pencil drawing, we scan into PhotoShop at 300dpi and work in there to digitally paint the scanned drawing. A limited custom set of swatches help us to keep a consistent colour scheme, and these are used as Solid Fill Layers, with an inverted bitmap mask on each one. The masks are where we paint, gradually revealing the fill colour associated with each layer. These layers often have a Multiply blend applied to them so that the hand drawn elements are more visible.

Here is the finished work (click for high-resolution image).