Behind The Scenes: Sopranos Illustration

I like to re-watch some of my favorite TV shows from time to time. Even though some pretty serious and popular shows came in the recent years, there still is one for me, that rules them all. It's the ultimate crime family TV show - Sopranos. It's so brilliantly written and clever, that if you didn't see it yet, you need to watch it right now :)

This time, I returned to my low poly base character to recreate the iconic Satriale's meat shop storefront, where the wise guys are spending a lot of time. And I love the fact, that most of the show, even if deep in the pockets, Tony Soprano drives his wine red Chevy Suburban. I didn't have time for more characters, so I decided on sun enjoying Paulie Gualtieri in his favorite jogging suit :) Ah, those stereotypes.

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So this time, it was a bit other way around. I wasn't researching because I didn't know what to create. I had a perfect picture in my mind, but it needed a specific TV scenes to check out all the details. Memory works in a mysterious way and even if you think you know, how something should look, I really recommend checking the reference. You might be surprised, how many holes in the memory we fill with own imagination.

It was a bit hard to look for the scenes with Satriale's shop, the show isn't that popular these days and there are lot of images with poor quality. So I've gathered all the angles I could, gathered some Chevy references with the blueprint and focused the next search on Paulies images. I wanted to pick the most common apparel for him and I wanted to have a clear view of his hair style and features to transfer to low poly base mesh.

I sketched out a quick layout of how I imagined things to be, filling out missing pieces from the reference. For example, I didn't realize, there was a big street sign with traffic light over the shop. So I gladly included it in the sketch to make the layout a bit more interesting. I just rotated it 90 degrees to better match my composition.

So I ended up with a distilled down version of the storefront with checkered table in the front and with Paulie enjoying a bit of that sweet New Jersey sunlight :D I've included the Chevy on the sidewalk, even though the main protagonist of the show is missing. Let's just assume, he's tending to business inside :)

As a final note, I have to say the most challenging part of the final render were the colors. As you can see, the original color scheme is a bit bleak, but I wanted to keep it as close to the original as possible. So I used mostly materials with full roughness and one little trick helps with bringing out the colors more without unwanted reflections - toning down the specular. This creates a bit of a flat feel, so to bring back the 3D, I used strong sunlight to create sharp shadows for better objects definition.
That wraps the insights for the isometric Sopranos illustration this week. Thanks for reading and I hope it will help you with some of your projects.

See you on the next one!