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Final piece.

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Evaluation

I feel like with this project, I went a little risky and went with something entirely new to me to try and develop a new skill with digital art, and just art in general, I went into it thinking initially it would be a 2D pixel game, but found myself intrigued and decided to make something using skills I desired rather than skills I had. 

This was the first draft of the main character before I had made that jump, it is anatomically incorrect, the lighting and shading is  crude, and I didn’t use a lot of helpful tools such as the lasso tool or multiply layers, as I really didn’t understand much about the software at this time.

This was the second version of the character, There was definitely some improvement, but after this I decided I wanted to get better at drawing in general, so I started practicing with pencil and paper, I wish I had done this at the start as it would’ve lead to a lot more improvement over a longer amount of time, I feel this was a very good call on my part.

After 3 weeks of practice with pencil and paper, I came back to photoshop and drew this, a lot of improvement from an anatomical perspective, but also with a more interesting pose and angle. You can really see the improvement from those weeks of practice.

(trying to recreate what i do on pencil and paper on digital, draw the circle for the head and putting the face together from there.

Perspective drawing, posing and building up the shape of a body, clothes, digital drawing, getting used to using layers. All of this served to give me a lot more knowledge and the ability draw humanoid figures. At this point, I was comfortable with redrawing my character somewhat consistently, and I’ve only improved with time, I’m now comfortable with putting a character together in clothes in 30-40 minutes, I feel this period of practice was very important and attributed to my success.

I recreated the one from above digitally by using it as a reference, in future I’d rather just photo copy it and trace over it in photoshop, it could lead to better results.

This would later become the lineart for my final piece (with a bit of patching up)

I feel this piece is a huge improvement, and a demonstration of all the skills I’d learned, getting more familiar with photoshop and making huge progress over the course, but I acknowledge there’s room for a lot more improvement, I wish in hindsight I had drawn entirely knew lineart, instead of what I improved upon instead, the sword, shield and horns also feel very lacking. This was a very important journey, and I’m looking forward for my next project, as I’m sure it will benefit greatly from everything I learned for this project. I met my expectations, but In hindsight I should of drawn a fresh piece of lineart for it instead of using lineart from a few weeks prior, I feel like I should also work on my colouring and background building, such as maybe a mountain, or some kind of distanced and silhouetted terrain, something to just fill the space.

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background

Tried a little lighting, I don’t think I accurately replicated what  a glint of light woukld look like on metal, but I feel it does serve to show that there is some reflection going on.

Darkened the fog and added a lighter yellow hue to the further left corner

Darkened cloud formations using the smudge tool, and added orange lighting to it using the lasso tool and the hard lighting layer, I thought the clouds turned out rather well.

I decided to add some loud formations as the sky was looking a bit too empty.

Added some lighter whisps to the sky, andsome oranger ones before blending it together with the smudge tool scratch blend brush, this gave it a nice blend instead of sharp and drastic changes in colouring.

Made the  background layer then set it to the bottom,  added darker red at the bottom and an orange hue at the top as the light source, then I used the smudge tool along with a scratch blend brush to blend both colours together

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Outcome, MC

start from bottom to top

It was very important to get used to layering in photoshop, as it allows you to change things as a whole as long as you haven’t accidentally done thing on wrong layers, this allows you to change cape colouring, armour plates, clothing, shading etc, and let’s you erase one specific thing to leave the rest untouched, but it can take a while to get used to it.

Finalized design, drawng some squiggles in dark gray on a new layer, above the background, before using the smudge tool to give that misty effect, then raising it up aboe the character’s layers to give that effect.

Finalized design without fog, I go into detail on how I did the background in the blog above.

Shading using a multiply layer, the light source is from the top left corner, I changed the shading colour from a dark gray/blue to almost reddish to fit the background above.

Colouring the looser clothing and cape using more flats, as well as colouring the bands which hold some of the plates of armour

Applying the glowing eye to the helmet and the void to the shield, adding a glow to it using the photoshop outer glow.

Colouring in the black visor in the helmet.

Beginning to colour his plated armour using flats, which allows me to play aroudn with the colouring later, if I have to change my decision.

Here I’ve done the line art, it differes form the sketch where the sleeves meet the torso, and also I made the shin and legs slightly longer, as he felt too short before

Here I’m doing the sketch based off of the guidelines for a more specific and detailed guide to follow for lineart, however the lineart can and will differ in some places, it’s important to do this to improve your accuracy with anatomy to try and get things looking right and in the right position

Here I’m sketching a rough skeleton to get the shape of the pose right, it’s very minimal and only serves as a rough guideline for where to position the limbs

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Mechanical pencils

Bought some mechanical pencils over the weekend and did some doodling

Really pleased with how the pencil feels and how well it draws, looking forward to using it in future.

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Software research

I looked into a bunch of software besides from the standard of photoshop, one that really caught my attention was clip studio, but unfortunately it was too expensive. Another few I looked into was procreate, but that one was an android exclusive. These were recommended to me by actual digital artists who I’m in contact with, this is some of their work.

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Easter holiday practice

Some Line art practice for hair, face and clothing, still a long way to go but it made for good practice

used a model as reference and tried to replicate their pose.

Here I’m colouring in certain muscle groups to help me piece together the overall lay out and the shapes they make, I later did this with pen and pencil 

A sketch on my notebook, practicing the same thing , but with two angles, it’s important to me to repeat this process, but it’s also nice to see my improvement overtime.

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More sketches

Having trouble with making head shapes, so decided to consistantly practice jaw lines.

(apologise for the lighting)

Revisiting male anatomy to gauge my improvement since the start of this course, coparing it to my first piece

Attempting female anatomy again, applying things I know such as women having slimmer shoulders, wider hips and smaller waists.

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Ultron’s armour is a bit more futuristic, but the idea for character design is the same, large imposing spaulders, chest plate, and cape. It looks like a very futuristic take on medieval armour.

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Game of thrones - The hound

The hound’s armour is realistic mail armour, although I’m sure the design is a bit too unique to be anything that came out of the medieval period, the helmet is imposing and intimidating

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Lord of the rings

The Lord of the rings trilogy is a fantasy icon for it’s gripping adventures, I personally can’t remember anything about it but I still find the artwork stunning, building up the world in which many people had fallen in love with.

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Mark Scicluna

He worked alongside Roxie Vizcarra for some of her work with Rockstar 

They’re very character orinted and have an interesting gritty style which is perfect for post apocalyptical designs for characters and enemies Some of his work however is also very cartoonish, it almost reminds me of the looneytoons

There’s also some experimenting with backgrounds (sky) at different times of day 

This poster seemed to use the top middle one for a cave background for Ephemeral’s poster 

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Warhammer

I don’t know much about warhammer, but I’ve always found their character designs interesting, especially the space marines.

It’s big and bulky armour with matching bulky swords and shields (sometimes guns) but it was always very unique compared to other fantasy armour designs, it’s very easy to look at warhammer art and characters and say “oh that’s from warhammer” without knowing anything else about the game or character 

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Persona 5

Persona 5 is a PS4 exclusive I’ve never had the chance to play, but ave always been impressed by it’s style and the way it presents itself, not only is this style present in the artwork, but also the game itself.

The HUD for this game is incredibly praised, always said to be as vibrant and expressive as the characters, and despite knowing so little of the game, from what I’ve seen I have to  agree

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Assassin’s creed valhalla

Assassin’s creed valhalla is a more linear kind of concept art and marketing, mostly just capturing the world and characters within the same style and using something which looks similar to the engine, personally I don’t find it to be very creative. This would however be a good thing to look at while designing and coming up with amour ideas. But as for artwork, it all just feels uninspired.

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Roxie vizcarra

Roxie Vizcarra is a videogame concept artist who worked in conjunction with rockstar to create some of the marketing artworks and character concepts from 2009 to 2019, featuring ones most notably from GTA5 and RDR2 

The red dead 2 ones are my personal favourite, the use of red and yellow with that white shine makes for incredible imagery which does well to capture the essence of a game which is surrounded by death

Her work on GTA 5 all follows the same realistic theme which captures the essence of los santos along with the characters, bringing further life to such an engaging and vibrant city. Along with her work in rockstar, she’s also had deals elsewhere 

Her work is very diverse and unique, some of them coming off as rougher sketches, without it looking unappealing, but more rustic and imperfect

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Witcher 3

The witcher announced a new saga along with this artwork, taking the iconic necklace as the main focus   

Some fanart 

The witcher is a franchise which is shrouded with lore, originating from the books, it had a lot of stuff to already work with, concept art and fanart all serve to try and bring such a vast world to life