Cursed Hunter environment art

Carrying on the cursed hunter theme from the previous concepts but this time showing it in an environment piece. I wanted to show the early process of a tree growing around a hunter who has given up on his hunt and how that might look in the games setting.

Once the tree grows around the hunter they can't talk or be interacted with. Instead they have notes that you can read through and keep. Adding to your knowledge of the creatures and the surrounding area. In this case though as the tree hasn't completely engulfed the hunter I'd still want him to be able to talk and possibly act as a side quest giver or help to set the scene of what's to come in the current quest.

I wanted the forest and the trees to look tangled and hard to navigate to help show the difficulty of the area that this hunter has fought and lost in. Helping the player to prepare themselves for a difficult challenge ahead. To contrast this I painted the hunter in a nicer well lit area that seems a bit more pretty. Reason one for this is to help indicate to the player that it's save to approach. Reason number two is that it will help draw the players eye and lead them over there in an open world setting. And lastly because if you were about to die I'd think people are most likely to choose a nice spot over a not so nice one if they could.   

I started this concept along side the 'Dead tree' piece seen below.

I ended up scrapping the top image as it wasn't going in the direction I wanted. However I could still use it to help build up the image below it more easily with colours and shapes. So even though I decided not to finish the first painting because I was using the Split canvas method I was able to build up the second image at the same time and have the second image to focus on instead of feeling like I had to start a whole new piece again because it didn't work. The good thing about working with two images is that if one fails the other one can still work and I don't feel like I've wasted time or feel demotivated.