The Creative Process – Roger’s Place Post Apocalypse

Ever since I released these images out into the internet-wild, I’ve had quite a bit of questions about my process for creating these post-apocalyptic images of various Edmonton landmarks. So here is a bit of a breakdown of my process on how I created my Roger’s Pace Post Apocalypse image.

Typically I’ll always start with a photograph as the foundation for the artwork. I wanted to get a photo of Roger’s Place from an easily identifiable angle. My goal with this image, as well as with my other post-apocalyptic images, was to make the viewer feel that they were looking at the scene in real life; as if they were the one wandering about in this post-apocalyptic world. For the composition, I wanted the focus mainly to be on Roger’s Place, but also wanted to get the Stantec Tower in the shot as well. Both are quite new and modern-looking, and I thought giving the Stantec Tower the apocalyptic treatment as well would make the image much more ominous.

So I went out early on a Sunday morning to take the photos. I was hoping to avoid a lot of traffic but the morning still seemed quite busy. I took quite few shots. I even tried taking a few photos while standing in the middle of the road (since if you were wandering around in the end-times, would you really still keep to the sidewalk?) however even standing in the crosswalk with traffic at a red light, I was still paranoid I was going to get run over.

But I still managed to get a shot I was happy with for my composition.

So whenever I start one on these images, I always get rid of the sky or background first. I’ll then paint in some colors for the sky to change the general mood of the piece. With this one, I knew it was a must to make the overpass walkway look destroyed and laying across the street. I started by chopping up the walkway into dozens of layers and moving and rotating the various ‘chunks’ of debris. I then roughly painted in some various beams and wreckage behind it.

Most of the work on this one involved digitally painting dirt and grime, then overlaying it with rough, “grunge” textures. For the grass and foliage overgrowth, I’ve discovered a technique that works quite well. I’ll first paint-in the grass by using green tones with a thick textured photoshop brush. Next – in much the same way as I did with the grunge texture on the buildings – I’ll overlay grass and foliage textures, mask it, then lightly paint them into the green areas. Lastly, I’ll go overtop of it once more with a grass-style brush.

This whole process is better illustrated in the time-lapse video below.

One of the things I like most about this piece is the addition of the Field Hospital check-in gate. I wanted to give the impression that the arena was a long-abandoned field hospital in a decades-ago lost battle against COVID. I chose the purple and teal color scheme to match the design of Alberta Health’s public messaging at the time. As well, I created a large opening where the current arena’s doors are, and added cement barricades, a fenced-off entrance-way, and a check-in kiosk. I wanted to convey the idea that this area had once been completely converted to a quarantined field hospital, and the entrance solely devoted to taking-in a steady stream of ambulances and other emergency vehicles.

As a final touch for my images, I’ll create a top “soft light” layer, and with a large soft brush, lightly paint-in various color tones. I find this helps unify and balance all the different pieces and color tones of the composition.