Christian and James Continued: Base Lighting and Background Flats

So last night and this morning I continued to illustrate this out.  I actually added some lighting values by creating a Linear Burn layer with a blue-grey applied to create the shadows, then a yellow white with Overlay to create highlights.  After this, I actually needed to adjust James's skin tones, as he looked a bit lifeless.

This morning I began my Illustrator hop.  I have a ton of reference pictures from old libraries, most from the Trinity Library, and wanted to get the perspective right.  With help from reference and the perspective grid, I was able to block in the form of the shelves and background, then bring these back into Photoshop, apply gradients to block in basic lighting  in preparation for going for the gusto--details.  Right now I'm rather happy with the tonal values and color palette.  We'll let it sit for another few hours and see what I decide to change before going in for more "character" on the environment.  I'll likely have to adjust the composition as I move forward, but that is the luxury of using Vector Smart Objects as the background base.  A little adjustment there will be my next step before detailing--unless I want half a dozen groups in my file.

Here we are:

Despite the lack of shadow under James and Christian, the two are very much coming to life.  Obviously, still a lot of work and clean up to go, but this is really moving along like I pictured in my head.