I've always been obsessed with terrariums, and the idea of little microcosms, self-contained worlds under glass. I would love to own one of those EcoSpheres with the brine shrimp and algae.
I decided to do a pretty ambitious but light-hearted picture of space terrariums with an attending spacecraft, as well as an artificial sun. I started Thursday, August 29, and am now pretty much finished.
Here is the rough pencil idea:
I will post more images of the many elements that went into this.
Gold fish bowl detail, with Sea Monkeys (brine shrimp)for food:
Snake and mouse with succulent plants:
Space Bird plane with chimpanzee pilot:
Some elements shown in wireframe and preview in Illustrator:
Sea monkey overkill:
I wish the chimp pilot showed better — handsome fellow (or lady, can't tell).
The terrarium/aquarium pebbles were taken from another image where I had created rock textures (see
An Unfortunate Discovery), and isolated bits with a mask and a layer effect to create highlights and shadows. Those layer effects take a lot of trial and error to get then to work, but it can be worth it.
The snake was done with a custom scales brush in Illustrator, then altered with the Line Width editing tool. The rest was done in Photoshop.
