emychublog

[emychublog]

The final piece was finally posted just shy of a few hours from the deadline. I’m really happy with how it turned out, my final bits of polish really pushed it further, and this piece as a whole allowed me to further polish my character workflow. Way less struggle than with my previous “Ninja Cat” entry over summer, and done in way less time. I’m particularly happy with my color schemes and rendering of the fire, although there was a very last minute change as I had to invert the fire colors, as fire is always brighter where its hottest. But with this workflow it was relatively quick and easy to make those changes, as opposed to having to repaint it. Looking forward to next month’s challenge!

[emychublog]

So I had a pretty good idea for what kind of charcter I wanted to create, now it was time for the dreadful “fleshing out the sketch and having to actually figure out the details without loosing the character and fluidity of the sketch oh god this is impossible”. How her dress drapes, her branches intersect and how many toes is she going to have. (so far she is having two, might add more later on. stay tuned!)

5 bad attempts later, I finally reach a final sketch I like and a fleshed out silhouette. Now its time to try out a technique i’ve been studying for ages but never found the time to practice properly over the summer. 

todays article is sponsored by: artists who are really good at this technique that ive learned from.

By painting the ambient occulision and creating a simple grayscale render, I have free reign over the color scheme, which means I dont have to settle down with one choice where any change will be a paint to paint over. Plus when you do it well, it makes the whole process very quick. making the grayscale takes the longest (aside from idea iteration and sketching different designs).

I start by laying out the basic forms of the figure. I dont need to worry about a light source, that can all be done ‘post-processing’. I also start fleshing out the growth direction of her roots and tweak the silhouette.

Now to add darker shadows fitting ambient occlusion. This makes it very easy later on to mess with the lightsource and colors. I pay some attention to the values in certain areas, but overall i try and keep it the same shade of gray for easier coloring.

Now this is the truly best moment, adding the rim lighting. *chef kiss* beautiful, amazing, the whole character just pops out the screens and it all comes together. this is defiantly the most satisfying moment. 

Quick Tip: I love adding beautiful studio rim lighting as much as the next guy, but dont forget to stick to your lightsource. decide where that back-lighting is coming from (in my case from her giant glowing fire falcon on her right.)

Whats amazing about this technique is that its so flexible, especially with the unpredictable nature of concept art pipelines. Your client sends you an email saying “That looks great, but can you make her purple with pink hair, i’m meeting with the producer in 30 minutes need it done ASAP” ? We got you. (picture.)

[emychublog]

CDC Elf Warrior - Thumbnail

This month’s Character Design Challenge over at the facebook group was elf warrior! your most standard fantasy character. 

The challange with a character like this is that its already such a popular subject, theres so many highly identifiable elf warrior characters. And with a massively popular event like CDC you want your design to stand out among the crowd. With the amount of submission added to the group every day, I just want mine to be memorable.

I began some really simple thumbnails. No set idea in mind yet, just putting down whatever came to mind when thinking of an elf warrior.

These helped me get some very basic but important decisions on the character; she’s female, highly agile and acrobatic, archer/assassin, a long, slim and sharp silhouette. In my mind I also imagined her as a more magical elf, very much inspired by the Spriggans in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim who are these literal wood elf-like creatures who protect the woods.

I thought she needed a forest companion, so I went with a beast like horned tiger (but that has some wolf elements too.) I really like the dynamic pose, this could make for a really cool piece. But its also already getting a bit complicated. By practically adding a giant tiger, another character to draw the anatomy of and design, this might be a bit more than i can chew for this (supposedly small) project. 

Until now I was just exploring different dynamic poses to present the characters. As a reminder, the CDC emphasizes characters above all, with ideally little to no distracting backgrounds. So far I was quite happy with the direction of my sketch so I pulled out some reference, drew a sad box to try and find whats the perspective in this drawing (non was found as far as i’m aware.) and fleshed out the tiger, making him more tiger-like, as well as making a pumped-up elf in quite the pinup pose. I also fleshed out more of the story for my characters; a wood elf and her wood tiger who protect their forest jungles from harm. They’re magical beings with their hair and mane being made of flames. (pretty hardcore method of protecting a forest, but I really liked the juxtaposition. In my head I was thinking about the ongoing amazon fires, and that if they were a guardian of the amazon, they would half flames expressed in their form as well.)

By this point I took a short break, and when I came back I wasn’t as happy with the sketch anymore. My character was very warrior but not much elf besides the ears, and I was worried that with my already tight schedule tackling on a full tiger besides a full character will prove too difficult. That’s not to say I really like where my thumbnails led me, it was a good path I would want to go back to and explore more, but right now I have a different destination to reach; a warrior elf.

Its important to take a step back every now and then and reflect on the journey. Looking again through my first rough sketches, this pose really struck me as what I really had envisioned. A slim half-wood elf guardian of the forest with fire hair and a slightly evil aura. Her only allegiance is with the forest. I sketched a tiger companion for her, but suddenly a fire falcon just seemed like a much more natural direction for her. A tiger is too bulky and beastly for a swift forest assassin/mage.

I made some rough color tests, I really liked how the blue flames looked, but I might combine it with the blue dress fabric later on and experiment some more. But either way I was very happy with this direction.