LogInEnzo Minarro shared with us the process of designing an environment featuring an Art Deco museum and dinosaurs, explaining the environmental concept art flow that covers drawing keyframes in grayscale, creating 3D models, and refining designs through iterative 2D and 3D work.
Introduction
Hi, my name is Enzo Minarro. I’m a French Concept Artist currently based in Montreal, Canada. I’ve been working in the animation and video game industry for the past five years, specializing in environment concept art and 2D matte painting.
Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects, such as Marvel’s What If…?, where I created 2D matte paintings with the talented team at Squeeze Studio. I also contributed concept art to Disney+’s Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire while working at Digital Dimension in Montreal. Currently, I’m at Eidos Montreal, working on an upcoming AAA video game project.
Outside of work, I enjoy exploring traditional media like oil painting and diving into subjects that inspire my art, such as paleontology and nature. My passion lies in creating engaging designs and building coherent, story-driven worlds, whether for professional projects or personal ones.
Project Origin and Inspirations
In this article, I’ll guide you through the process behind my latest project, featuring an Art Deco museum and dinosaurs, developed as part of a concept art course. It all started at the end of 2023, after I finished reading Michael Crichton’s The Lost World. Around the same time, I was contacted by the digital art online course platform Wingfox.com, offering me the opportunity to create a concept design course. I decided to seize the opportunity and immediately began searching for a theme I was passionate about, a project I could work on over several months without losing interest.
As a dinosaur enthusiast for as long as I can remember, and with The Lost World fresh in my mind, it felt natural to focus on dinosaurs and theme parks. Initially, I considered taking direct inspiration from the book and illustrating specific scenes from it, as it seemed like an excellent source material. However, during a trip to Spain with my girlfriend, I visited Park Güell in Barcelona once again. I had been there before, but revisiting it this time inspired me to incorporate it into my project as a major reference.
That’s when the story came together: a 1920s park featuring a large Art Deco museum and greenhouse at its center, with dinosaurs exploring the space. This concept allowed me to demonstrate environment workflows with a strong focus on architectural design in the Art Nouveau/Art Deco style while also dedicating an entire chapter of the course to crafting dinosaurs in Blender.
Gathering References
The first step was gathering references from various sources: personal photos, images from the internet, Art Nouveau architecture, park landscapes, fossils, and dinosaur skeletons. This step is crucial because it’s where you build a visual library that helps flesh out the universe you’re creating. I also make sure to include personal references, whether they’re photos, notes, or sketches, to add a unique perspective and connection to the project.
Design Exploration
At the same time, I began sketching ideas in 2D using Photoshop. At this stage, I avoided using color, focusing only on shades of gray. I started by drawing a few keyframes I had in mind and gradually shifted my focus to the overall environment design, particularly the main building. For this central structure, I sketched several design options in grayscale, focusing on front views.
Once I had these initial sketches, I began mocking up the designs in Blender, using simple primitive shapes and flat colors to create low-poly scenes. During this step, I also began working on another key area: the entrance staircase, where my main characters, the raptors, encounter an old, strange-looking dinosaur statue.
As a concept artist, I find that these early stages in production are all about exploring different options to present to your art director for feedback and decision-making. This workflow isn’t limited to professional projects; it’s just as valuable for personal projects as it allows you to refine your ideas and improve your designs.
Then, it was all about pushing these designs and scenes to the next level. For the entrance scene, I was still exploring different options while refining it.
I concentrated my efforts and a significant amount of time on the main building. Once I decided on the final design, I pushed the scene as far as I could. I designed and modeled certain parts of the building, such as the decorative elements on top of the pillars, separately, sometimes working in different files before integrating them into the main scene. It felt like creating a custom kitbash set tailored specifically for the needs of my building.
Something that really helped me during this stage was isolating parts of my design and doing quick 2D paintovers in Photoshop. This gave me a clear direction to follow, which I could then replicate in Blender. Doing a lot of back-and-forth between 2D and 3D definitely helped refine my design. This iterative process is a fundamental part of the concept art pipeline: we start with the overall shape, “the big picture,” and then narrow it down to focus on the finer details.
Create the Metallic Structures
For most of the metallic structures that make up the roofs, I simply used Bezier curves and added thickness to them. The ornaments, such as the ammonite patterns or the stained glass, were created using the Grease Pencil and Curve tools in Blender. In Drawing mode, I was able to either hand-draw the ornaments or create them using the Curve or Line tools. From there, it was just a matter of adding geometry to those curves by applying a custom profile or simply adding thickness using the bevel and depth settings in the Curve Data properties.
Dinosaur Design
I dedicated an entire chapter of my course and therefore, a significant portion of my project to dinosaur design. Even if we don’t see much of them in my paintings, which are more environment-focused, I still wanted to create high-quality dinosaur models from scratch in Blender. These models can be used as they are or as assets for future keyframes.
For this section, the process was quite similar to the one used for the environment. First, I needed to gather references before starting the design and building the 3D models.
The unique aspect of designing dinosaurs is that the process is often framed and conditioned by the latest scientific discoveries and paleontological findings. This falls under the realm of “Paleoart,” an art movement focused on depicting ancient species based on scientific knowledge.
Because of this, I didn’t spend too much time inventing the overall shapes and forms of my dinosaurs. Instead, I concentrated on observational drawings from skeletons, modern animals, and artistic representations, as well as other depictions like documentaries and films. This approach allowed me to assimilate and understand the morphology and anatomy of these creatures.
Of course, even with scientifically based subjects, there is still room for creative liberties. Since the overall shape of these animals is largely determined, my creativity came into play mainly in designing their colors and making a few minor design adjustments, such as defining the placement, shape, and number of feathers for the raptors.
After completing my observational drawing and color design phase, I began blocking out the models in Blender. The first step was to create a simple base mesh and sculpt it using the Dyntopo modifier. At this stage, I included a skeleton side view and top view as image references in my Blender file to help maintain accurate proportions.
Once I was satisfied with the base model and had established a solid foundation, I moved on to retopology and UV unwrapping. After that, I duplicated the model and began sculpting fine details using the Multiresolution modifier. This allowed me to bake the high-resolution sculpt details into normal maps and cavity maps.
Finally, I hand-painted a base color map based on my color design research, rigged the model, and completed the process. By the end, I had a low-poly model with the visual quality of a high-resolution model, complete with all my custom maps.
Painting the Keyframes
The last part of this project consists of painting keyframes/illustrations. These are usually the parts that Concept Artists prefer. However, I’ve insisted all along my course about the importance of the preparatory phase and the design part, which plays a very important role in the creation of a unique and credible world.
At this stage, I had all the required elements to create my keyframes; this was the time to focus on composition, image readability, and value structure. I looked back at one of the first sketches I did at the very beginning of this project to stay true to my original idea while considering new compositions that 3D allowed me to create by playing with the camera placements in my scene. I worked my lighting directly into Blender before enhancing the images in 2D using Photoshop.
At the same time, I worked on producing a series of rough color sketches that I compiled into a color script. The purpose of this was to place my paintings within a timeline and storytelling context. It also allowed me to pre-visualize the moods and colors I wanted for my final paintings. These colored thumbnails are quick and fun to create: I simply took screenshots of my 3D scene, brought them into Photoshop, and painted over them with colors. Most of the time, I started with grayscale screenshots, as I wanted to develop my color schemes directly in 2D.
The final step was to complete the final paintings. I decided to demonstrate two different approaches.
For the entrance painting with the raptors and dinosaur statue, I painted everything manually. I still used my 3D scene, but only as a guide, drawing directly on top of my grayscale render. I then used this line pass as a foundation to start painting. The workflow was very similar to the one we used in production when I was creating 2D matte paintings. You start with a simple 3D layout or line art and then build on top, beginning with flat colors, followed by ambient occlusion, lighting passes, and freehand painting layers. It’s almost like painting your own 3D passes.
The second painting (the museum night scene) was done using a more hybrid approach. For this one, I pushed the 3D further by working directly on the lighting and textures in Blender. By the time I started painting in Photoshop, I already had a solid base from which to work. All that remained was to break the 3D look, enhance the lighting, and blend everything to create a more painterly feel.