Melon Mirage

Concept by Zackery Adame

Concept

The initial concept was derived from a photo study by Zackery Adame. I was particularly captivated by the warmth that emanates from the subsurface scattering and the exaggerated stylization of the melons.

Reference

My references included both real and stylized watermelons and environments. When I initially saw the image, the giant bite marks reminded me of the giant watermelon tunnel from A Bug’s Land. For the realistic environments, I reached out to Zackery, who explained the origin of the painting and sent me the original photo that inspired the concept. I then gathered images of the area in the photo from the internet and spent a significant amount of time researching the types of plants native to the location to ensure environmental accuracy in my scene.

Lighting

When lighting this scene, I had several decisions to make. To effectively showcase the surface details of the watermelon, I needed to prioritize the key lights; however, doing so would overpower the hand-painted subsurface scattering (SSS) details, which are displayed using the rim lighting. Using the concept as my guide, I decided to light the two slices further back in my scene with stronger rim lighting to accentuate the SSS. In contrast, I used stronger key downlighting on the front slice to emphasize its surface details.