Paint Suprematist Sci-Fi Movie Concept Art

Choose File → New and make a 1920 × 1080 document with a White background.

Click the left ruler to drop horizontal guides at 138 and 942. These are the inner edges of the letterbox bars. Add a third at 700 for the horizon. Then click the top ruler at 640 and 1280 to mark the thirds.

Open the Reference drawer from the panel toolbar on the right and add the Malevich painting. Look at how nothing in it sits level: every plane is tilted, and the planes cross each other at steep angles instead of running parallel. Close the drawer when you've had a good look.

Double-click Layer 1 and rename it Sky. Pick the Gradient tool, set it to Linear and click Advanced… to set two stops: #DED7C7 on the left and #F3EEE2 on the right. Drag from the top bar guide straight down to the horizon guide. The sky is darker at the top and brightest at the horizon, like the glow before sunrise.

Click Add Layer at the bottom of the Layers panel and name the new layer Ground. With the Rectangular Marquee, select everything from the horizon guide down to the bottom of the canvas. Change the gradient stops to #F1ECE0 and #E5DECE, then drag from the horizon down to the bottom bar guide. The steppe should stay almost white: Malevich's backgrounds are off-white, never brown.

Press Cmd+D to deselect.

The eclipse goes in the upper-right third, where the ship will be heading.

First the planet. Add a layer called Eclipse. With the Elliptical Marquee, click once on the canvas without dragging to open the exact-size dialog. Enter a circle from 1470, 220 to 1770, 520, a 300 px disc. Set the foreground colour to #1D1C1B and choose Edit → Fill. Deselect.

Now click the Ground layer and add a layer called Corona. It lands between the ground and the planet. Click with the Elliptical Marquee again and make a much larger circle on the same centre, from 1380, 130 to 1860, 610. Choose Select → Feather… and enter 63, the largest feather Lopsy allows.

Fill the feathered circle with white #FFFFFF, deselect, and set the Corona layer's opacity to 85%.

The feather fades the white out over 63 px around the circle's edge, so the planet looks backlit.

Click the Eclipse layer and add a layer called Ring above it.

Pick the Shape tool and set Shape to Ellipse. Click the Fill swatch and choose Remove fill. Click the stroke — button to add a stroke, type D9A33C into the colour popover's hex field, and set Width to 5.

Shapes grow out from where you press. Press on the centre of the planet and drag about 220 px right and 44 px down. You get a flat ochre ellipse wider than the planet.

Cmd-click the Ring layer's thumbnail to load the ring as a selection. Switch to the Move tool (V): handles appear around it.

Drag the round rotation handle just outside the top-right corner anticlockwise, by about 22°, so the ring rises to the right. Press Enter to apply it and Cmd+D to deselect.

Right now the ring runs across the front of the planet all the way round. The back half needs to disappear behind it.

Cmd-click the Eclipse thumbnail. This selects the disc, but the Ring layer stays active. Pick the Eraser (E), set Size to 24, and drag along the upper stretch of the ring, the part that crosses the disc above its centre. The selection stops the eraser at the disc's edge, so the ring is cut cleanly where it goes behind the planet. Deselect.

Suprematist architecture was white blocks with no windows: Malevich called his plaster models architectons. A row of them on the horizon gives the frame its sense of scale.

Click the Ring layer and add a layer called Steppe City. With the Rectangular Marquee, drag a narrow slab whose bottom edge sits on the horizon guide, somewhere under the eclipse. Then hold Shift and drag eight more, so they add to the selection. Make them 20–80 px wide and anywhere from 15 to 200 px tall, and let a couple of tall thin ones rise well above the rest.

Fill the selection with city white #F2EEE4 and deselect.

Add a layer called City Shade. Shift-drag a thin strip down the right side of every slab, about a sixth of its width (5 px for the thinnest). Fill with #CFC7B6. A hairline of shade is all the block needs to look solid.

The light is high on the right, so shadows fall towards us and to the left. Add a layer called City Shadows and set the foreground to ink. Each shadow is a slanted parallelogram with perfectly straight edges, so draw it with the Pen (P), not the freehand Lasso:

1. Click the four corners: the far end of the shadow, the slab's bottom-left corner, its bottom-right corner, and the far end again on the right. Make the shadow run down and left about as far as the slab is tall.
2. Click the first point again to close the path.
3. In the Paths panel, click Path to Selection, then Edit → Fill and deselect.

Repeat for each slab. Then run Filter → Gaussian Blur… at 2, open the layer's effects drawer (✦), set the blend mode to Multiply, and set the layer's opacity to 22%. Finally, select Steppe City and give it a Gaussian Blur of 1 so the distant slabs sit back in the haze.

Click City Shadows, then click New Group in the Layers panel and name the group Red Wanderer. Every plane of the ship goes on its own layer inside this group. Draw them all level for now: the whole ship gets turned in one go afterwards, so all the planes look parallel at this stage.

For each plane, add a layer, marquee a rectangle, fill it and deselect. Start with the hull. Click with the Rectangular Marquee to open the exact-size dialog and enter 804, 382 → 1236, 498. Every other plane is placed by eye around it. Here they are from the bottom of the stack to the top:

• Hull, red #B5372C: 432 × 116, the big plane everything hangs on.
• Keel, ink: 712 × 18. A long bar just below the hull, sticking out about 120 px at the back and 160 px at the front.
• Engine Block, ink: 144 × 170. A heavy square covering the rear end of the hull, with its bottom edge just below the hull's.
• Sail, ochre #D9A33C: 238 × 34. A bar floating about 15 px above the hull, starting near its middle.
• Sail Tip, ochre: 49 × 46. A small block just past the front of the sail.
• Fin, ultramarine #26357A: 252 × 16. A thin bar just below the keel.
• Nose, ink: 45 × 45. Use the Shape tool for this one. Set Shape to Rectangle, remove the stroke, and set the fill to ink. Click (don't drag) just in front of the hull, halfway down it, then type 45 × 45 into the Shape Size dialog and press Enter.
• Spar, ink: 374 × 9. A very thin rod high above the engine block, sticking out well behind it.

Click the Red Wanderer group's row and press Cmd+D so nothing is selected. With the Move tool, a single frame of handles appears around all the planes in the group.

Drag the top-right rotation handle anticlockwise by 24° and press Enter. The whole ship now climbs to the right, towards the eclipse. Every plane turned around the same centre, so they all keep their places.

Try Cmd+Z and Cmd+Shift+Z here: the turn undoes and redoes as one step.

Malevich's planes cross at steep angles. Here, every plane is still at the same 24°. Two of them need to break ranks.

Cmd-click the Spar thumbnail and, with the Move tool, drag its rotation handle clockwise by 60°. Press Enter and deselect. Then drag the spar so it runs from above the engine block, down through the rear of the hull, to the keel.

Do the same with the Fin: turn it 90° clockwise so it stands across the ship. Then drag it so it crosses the front of the hull and the keel, about two thirds of the way along.

Click the Spar layer and add a layer called Tail Bar (it lands inside the group). Marquee an upright bar about 26 × 210 px, centred on the keel about 60 px in from its back end, and fill it with ink. While it's still selected, switch to the Move tool and turn it 24° anticlockwise, so it stands at right angles to the keel. Press Enter and deselect.

Add one more layer called Antenna. Pick the Pencil (N) at Size 4 with ink as the foreground colour. Click just above the sail tip, then Shift-click out past the nose. The Shift-click draws a dead-straight line between the two points.

The ship needs a shadow on the ground, and the quickest way is to start from a copy of the whole ship.

Click the Red Wanderer group row and click Duplicate Layer. The copy appears directly above the original. Rename the original (lower) group Shadows. It will hold everything that sits behind the ship.

Inside Shadows, click its top layer (Antenna) and choose Layer → Merge Down nine times, until one layer is left. Rename it Ship Shadow. Rename the copy group back to Red Wanderer and collapse it with its arrow.

With Ship Shadow active, open its effects drawer (✦), turn on Color Overlay with ink black, and click Rasterize Layer Style. The merged ship is now a solid black silhouette.

Cmd-click its thumbnail, switch to the Move tool, and click Distort in the options bar. In Distort mode each corner handle moves on its own. Drag the four corners down onto the ground, below the ship. Squash the silhouette into a long, thin, slanted band about 950 px long and 100 px deep: the top edge a little shorter than the bottom, and the left end lower than the right. Press Enter and deselect.

Run Gaussian Blur at 3, set the layer to Multiply and drop its opacity to 16%. Keep it faint. The ship is high up, and a dark shadow would pin it to the ground.

Click Ship Shadow and add a layer called Speed Lines. It lands inside the Shadows group, so it sits behind the ship.

Each wedge is a long, thin triangle. It's wide at the stern, just behind the engine block, and runs to a point down and to the left, parallel to the ship. Draw each one with the Pen: click the far tip, then the two stern corners, then the tip again to close it. Path to Selection, fill, deselect. From top to bottom:

• wake red #D2695A: about 22 px wide at the stern and 480 px long
• wake grey #A69F92: about 12 px wide and 560 px long
• wake ochre #DDB466: about 18 px wide and 420 px long

Set the layer's opacity to 90%. Leave the edges sharp: blurring them would make a smudge, which is the opposite of Suprematism.

Click the Red Wanderer group's row so the photo lands above the ship. Drag Astronaut-EVA.jpg from your desktop onto the canvas. Lopsy shrinks it to fit the 1080 px height and selects it. Rename the new layer Cosmonaut and press Cmd+D.

With the Lasso, trace loosely around the astronaut, about 10 px outside him. Include the camera on its arm above his head. Keep the line tight under his boots so the blue Earth stays outside. A loose freehand line is fine here, because the next step cleans up what's left.

Choose Select → Inverse and press Delete. Everything outside the line, including the Earth, is gone. Deselect.

A thin rim of black space is left around him, plus dark gaps between his legs and between his arm and body. Pick the Magic Wand (W), set Tolerance to 60 and keep Contiguous on. Click the rim, then Shift-click each dark gap. Press Delete and deselect.

Contiguous matters here. It stops the wand from reaching the dark visor of his helmet, which isn't connected to the background.

Photos always leave a dark fringe of half-black pixels along the cut. Cmd-click the Cosmonaut thumbnail, choose Select → Shrink… at 3, then Select → Inverse and Delete. That trims three pixels off the whole outline. Deselect.

Cmd-click his thumbnail again and switch to the Move tool.

1. Hold Cmd and drag the bottom-right corner handle inwards until he's about 205 px tall, a bit taller than the engine block.
2. Drag from the middle of the box to move him into the upper-left of the frame, well clear of the speed wedges.
3. Turn him about 18° anticlockwise with a rotation handle, so his head leans towards the ship.

Press Enter once at the end. All three changes apply together, so the photo is only resampled once.

Cmd-click the thumbnail once more, Shrink by 1, Inverse, Delete. That trims the slight halo the scale leaves.

His suit is a cold, bright NASA white, and he looks pasted onto the warm frame. Run Filter → Hue/Saturation… with Saturation −30 and Lightness −3 to quiet the blue.

Then click Duplicate Layer and rename the copy Suit Grade. In its effects drawer, give it a Color Overlay of #C9B48F and click Rasterize Layer Style. Set the blend mode to Color, close the drawer and set the layer's opacity to 40%. Color mode takes only the copy's hue, so the suit picks up the warmth of the paper and keeps all its photographic shading.

Choose Layer → Merge Down to fold the grade into the Cosmonaut layer.

Click Cosmonaut, add a layer called Tether, and set the foreground to ink. Pick the Pen and set Stroke to 5 in the options bar.

1. Click on his backpack, at the right side of his body.
2. Press about halfway to the ship and a little lower, and drag to the right to pull out a curve handle. That gives the line a gentle sag.
3. Click on the left edge of the black engine block, near its top.

Press Enter. The path is stroked with the foreground colour at 5 px. Delete the path in the Paths panel so its outline doesn't get in the way.

Add a layer called Debris. Marquee a 24 × 24 square just below the ship's stern and fill it with ink.

Press Cmd+C and Cmd+V. Lopsy pastes the copy in place on a new layer, already selected and with the Move tool active. Drag it up ahead of the ship, just above the antenna, and turn it about 30° clockwise. Press Enter and deselect.

Click Debris again and paste a second copy. Move this one just below the stern, under the speed wedges, and turn it about 18° anticlockwise.

Click the top pasted layer and choose Merge Down twice to gather both copies back into Debris. Last, with Debris still active, marquee an 18 × 18 square just below and to the right of the astronaut and fill it with hull red.

The ship and the city cast shadows, so the astronaut needs one as well. Click Cosmonaut, click Duplicate Layer, and rename the copy Cosmonaut Shadow. Add a black Color Overlay, click Rasterize Layer Style, and Cmd-click the thumbnail.

With the Move tool in Distort mode, drag the corners down into a thin, flat sliver on the ground at the lower left, about 130 px long and 25 px deep. It should slant the same way as the ship's shadow. Press Enter and deselect.

Blur it by 3, set it to Multiply and 16% opacity, just like the ship's shadow.

Click Debris and add a layer called Letterbox. Make sure View → Snap to Guides is on.

With the Rectangular Marquee, drag from just off the top-left corner of the canvas to just off the right edge, letting go next to the 138 guide. The bottom edge snaps onto the guide. Hold Shift and drag a second bar from the 942 guide to just off the bottom-right corner. Fill both with ink black and deselect.

Studios label every key frame with the film, the frame number and the scene. Pick the Text tool (T). Before each new piece of text, click the Letterbox layer: if a text layer is active, changing the font restyles that layer instead.

1. Title: Syncopate, Bold, 44 px, cream #EFE8D8, letter spacing 8. Click in the top bar near the left and type RED WANDERER. Press Tab to finish, and rename the layer Title.
2. Frame Label: IBM Plex Mono, Regular, 21 px, #B8AE9C, letter spacing 3. Click in the right half of the top bar and type KEY FRAME 07 — THE TETHER.
3. Scene Label: same settings. Click near the left of the bottom bar and type EXT. THE WHITE STEPPE — FIRST LIGHT.
4. Format Label: same settings. Click in the right half of the bottom bar and type SC. 42 / 2.39:1.

Now line everything up with the Move tool and the arrow keys. The left-hand text starts 80 px from the left edge and the right-hand text ends 80 px from the right edge. Centre the capitals vertically in each bar: the top bar's middle is y 69 and the bottom bar's is y 1011.

Finally, click Letterbox, marquee a 16 × 16 square 20 px to the left of SC. 42, centred on the text, and fill it with hull red.

Click Debris and make one more text layer in an empty patch of sky at the left: RW-1924 in Syncopate Bold 28 px, #F3ECDC, letter spacing 6. Rename it Hull Mark.

Switch to the Move tool. A live text layer gets its own handles with no selection needed. Drag a rotation handle 24° anticlockwise to match the hull. The text stays editable after it's turned.

Drag the mark onto the red hull, then nudge it with the arrow keys until it sits in the middle of the red band. Leave clear red between it and the black spar on the left and the blue fin on the right. If it touches the crossing bars, the planes read as a tangle.

Click Ground and add a layer called Horizon Haze. Marquee a full-width band from 40 px above the horizon to 26 px below it. Choose Select → Feather… at 24, fill with #FBF7EE and deselect. Set the layer to 70% opacity.

The ground now melts into the sky at the horizon instead of meeting it at a hard line, which pushes the city into the distance.

Click Horizon Haze and add a layer called Canvas Grain. Fill it with mid-grey #808080, run Filter → Add Noise… with Amount 22 and Mono on, set it to Overlay and drop it to 40%.

Because the grain sits low in the stack, it only textures the sky and the ground. The planes, type and astronaut above it stay perfectly flat. That's how a Suprematist painting reads: flat colour on a living white.

Export with File → Quick Export PNG and keep the layers with File → Save Project.