Brought to your gracious attention
illustrations for Table Talk 1882 project
(Based on B. Akunin’s book of the same name)

Issued regularly

2 December, 2005

Chapter Five

Contents: Evening out. — In the light. — A few details. — Accent on the décolleté line.

In this chapter the writer takes the reader to the telegraph office not far from governor-general’s house on Tverskaya Street. It is not an ordinary post office, but a closed one—for official uses. The reader comes here for the first time and is very curious to see such a place furnished with the latest equipment.

Let us see.

As a habit, we start with a draft.

We draw an unfolded view of the walls and have Andrey Tikhanov “hunt for some reality.” Lets see what he got:

Not bad. We’ll try to use these elements in wall décor.

We prepare the textures:

And superpose the ready drawn elements:

It’s time to deal with lighting. Lets hang lusters and sconces and place here and there some antiques—oh sorry, I meant “the latest equipment.”

A bit too dark. Lets light both sconces—each has a five candle lamp.

It’s better. We model the lighting in the closed space.

How about the entourage? We are going to put a mirror on the front wall which will stress the depth. Find a nice piece in an antique shop, model and light it.

Heavy curtains add comfort.

And smaller everyday objects make it look real.

We leave open the door behind the reader. I’m just about to go off.

Turn around. And now the other way.

We need a stronger feeling of turning.

We hang a luster in the center. It’s a 3D model with appropriate glare and reflections on the crystal pendants—the luster is encircled with the room panorama.

We won’t turn on the upper lights to keep the room semi dark.

Andrey Azarov, Misha Antipin and Vanya Dembitsky did a beautiful job putting the parts together and placing the characters there to finish this fascinating scene.

Final image size — 9120×1384 px

(To be continued.)