Behind the Illustration 1

This post documents making of the illustration 'The Hunt' by Blood Bros. A reinterpretation of Paul Ruben's painting with the same name. To accurately reillustrate the work, a lengthy process was undertaken to capture a likeness in the gesture.

Initial green screen scene: Motion capture artists reenact the scene with harmless props. Dogs are manipulated with biscuits and pieces of meat. Markers allow for accurate reillustration of costumes, fur markings and facial features.

Additional dogs: To prevent chaos, some dogs were illustrated separately. Here, dog wrangler Terry accurately excited the dogs for compositing later.

Coyotes were not available at the location of the illustration, so instead cats were drawn. Their bodies not too different in size and stature from their canine cousins! For the dogs on the left, dog wrangler Terry uses the masks of human pups, both to include in the scene as well as alert the cat. The cats were otherwise manipulated with balls of green yarn and delicate petting.

After much reillustration, recolouring and the addition of background elements, the final work is complete.