Key Art | Illustration | Design
The Sopranos — Season 6 Part I
I knew I wanted to play with a lot of the symbolic, surreal themes of the season and thought that the obvious choice would be to go with Tony's coma dream imagery of the afterlife (definitely would have been a lot less trouble), but the idea of creating a toy train diorama to represent the season's arcs kept calling my name.
The Process:
- I visited a local toy train store and shot 100+ reference photos of train dioramas, figurines, buildings, and tracks.
- Back in Photoshop, I carefully selected, masked, and composited individual elements (trees, buildings, people) into a cohesive scene.
- I edited figures accordingly to fit the story and characters of the show.
It took weeks of trial and error, sometimes doubting the concept altogether. But, to me, leaning into the tactile quality of real miniature photography allowed the final piece to feel real in a way that I couldn't achieve with stock assets.