Week 16 Summary:
With the break over, my cold gone and feedback received for the first half of the year I began on the second half of the year and working to create the goals I promised I would achieve by the end of submission. To start I decided to do a number of pose sketches to decide which pose I wanted my seer character to be in for his final concept piece.
After I did the initial sketches and cleaned up the lineart I moved onto creating colour for the piece, I started with basic colours from the chosen colour palette, I had to readjust some of the poses a little as the design didn't look right when adding in colour. Once that problem was fixed I started moving onto the face, I really struggled with these faces mainly because I didn't have any good references of the face from the angles I had chosen so I found this task taking longer than I anticipated.
Finishing this piece with quick shadows and highlights into the clothing, when I began drawing the final image I used the bottom left design as a pose, however after multiple attempts the piece different look right. In the end I decided to use a different pose I had found and started working off of that so this piece worked more as a pose character sheet piece for my character rather than a final image introductory piece.
Week 17 Summary:
At this point I had my character designed, I had done concept art for him and some final pose ideas for which to draw him in, I decided to proceed with the final image design. I started by taking a few images and drawing the head lineart base, after drawing out the head I moved onto the rest of the body, however as previously mentioned, the pose I chose from the last piece didn't look right, so I searched for a new pose which would better match the head design, and I was able to find simple design that showed him off well, after a couple of practice sketches I added the pose to the head and was ready to start adding colour to the piece.
Chosen pose design alongside initial sketch and cleaned up lineart.
Introducing the first amount of colour to the piece. I started with adding basic shadows around the face and body to show where possible creases and edges of the clothes where, then I moved onto working on the face details, with that creating shadows and highlights to bring out the facial features, creating the lips, eyes and nose e.t.c. With that I started cleaning up the details, shaping the highlights giving a more humanoid face and shrinking the head a little as it looked a bit big compared to the clothes. I also started shaping the hair a little showing off where the hairlines travel.
Adjusting the cheekbone feature more, lightening up the edges of the neck and lowering the quantity of the shadows on the right side of the face, under and around the eyes.
Week 18 Summary:
Looking at the piece I had doubts whether the design actually looked like the character I was basing him off, so I decided to add Tom Hiddleston's Loki hairstyle on top to see if it looked like him, to my surprise it looked at lot like him, with that doubt free off my mind I continued on developing the piece.
With the face starting to look like the character I wanted I decided to move onto the clothing details, I started with the scarf, which took a couple of attempts, next came the wristbands, which was simple enough to make sure I have a defined highlight. Afterwards I worked on the sleeves, this took a couple of try's as I was unsure how the creases should look, so I did some research into the folds and creases on loose clothing before attempting a design I was pleased with.
Following the sleeves I decided to finish the lower half of the body, this included the belts, bags, bottles and fixing the wristbands. I also worked on the necklace the chain didn't take long but the necklace was a challenge with trying to get the metal texture looking right but successful. I admit to taking a lot longer to finish these details that I would have liked to as I kept getting picky with the design layout, where the shadows and highlights should go, as a result I kept redrawing them a number of times, I will need to speed up my workflow if I want to meet my goals on time. I also decided to change the sword handle as I was unhappy when attempting to detail it I went for a more wood texture than metal, after looking at wood textures I came to a design conclusion that I was happy with.
Week 19 Summary:
The beginning of the third week on this piece and I was wondering if I would ever finish this piece, At this point I realised that the arm didn't look aligned with the rest of the body, so I attempted to redraw the arm and move the sleeves into a new position.
My biggest problem with this piece is that because I am seeing it as a final piece, I am getting too precious about every little detail, and that is causing me so struggle a developing a better workflow for creating what I have promised for BA3. I will return to this piece at a later time once I have finished the concept art for the other characters.
Week 20 Summary:
Creating The Witch:
Due to the slow speed of my workflow with my Seer final image piece I was forced to move onto the next characters to create the concept art that I said I would achieve in my Learning agreement. So I started on my third character The Witch, using the research I had done last term I started creating ideas for her robes, I looked at monk robes for the first couple of designs and after developing a few more one of my friends pointed out that it looks similar to 80's style clothing so I started looking at that for ideas which lead me to a few more concepts. When I designed the second piece I looked more at torn robe designs, looking at witches who lived in places like forests and mountains, while these designs do give off a more menacing witch look I wanted to go for a more classy look for her as previously discussed in my blog last term.
Monk Robes:
80's Style Clothing:
Witch Robes & Rags:
Once I had created those first iterations, I chose two from each one and moved onto developing it further to the next level, the monk designs stuck out the most for me on the first piece because I liked the idea of the half robe, I mainly used cloaks and floral pattern at the end of the sleeve to iterate the idea further. The second piece I looked more into medieval robes and their designs, specifically the cross stitches and layers of clothing, adding cloaks and scarfs, trying to get a more witch vibe.
Medieval Robe Designs:
Week 21 Summary:
Once I had come up with those designs I decided to see what they would look like in colour before choosing a final piece, to start I created a simple design plate with a grey blue setting and then chose base colours for the designs, I then added a few gradient layers to show where the highlights and shadows would hit the most, with the bottom end of the dress having a more grey colour to indicate dirt that hits the dress. To finish the piece I added in major shadows to allow the gradient highlights to stand out more, my favourites are the first and fifth ones.
Similar to the last piece I uses the exact same steps in creating this piece, however the colours used are not chosen to be the final colours for that dress, I used these colours to get an idea of what they would look like on the dress. My favourites are the third and fifth one, however I think that I will be using the designs from the first piece for her final outfit design.
With the design for the dress done I was almost ready to move onto the character and model sheets, but before that, to finish the concepts I had to come up with the facial designs. I originally stated that my facial design would be based off the actress Tilda Swinton, with that I drew out a base head design, I felt the face was fine on its own so I left it as is and focused mainly on coming up with hair iterations. For my designs I chose mainly to use medieval hairstyles, The first piece I focused more on braided hairstyles, the second piece I went with a more wild, flowing and woodland lover hairstyle using flowers in the hair. The third piece was a combination of the two adding more onto the hairstyles I liked from the last ones, in the end I chose the top furthest right design on the final piece.
Week 22 & 23 Summary:
Now that I had a clear idea of what her face was going to be, I began to create a character sheet, in it I intended to show off her finalised dress and a few poses to show. I used pinterest and google images to find the poses that I liked and thought would best show off her personality traits and skills, I did find it extremely difficult when coming up with the facial designs from different angles as I struggled to get the character to look like Tilda Swinton, to counter this problem I decided to give the full body sketches no face. I then designed six wands from the research I did last term and gave her a crystal ball to show she can use clairvoyance, after that I cleaned up the design with the lineart making the sketches more readable.
Adding in a base colour to make the sketches easier to read against the background I chose these colour as I feel they suit the characters personality to be charming on the outside with the robes and dark on the inside when hiding herself with the cloak.
Once I had chosen the base colours I moved onto creating a gradient colour layer to show where the highlights and shadows would go, like last item I mixed a greyer colour at the bottom to show signs of dirt and where the dress would hit the ground. I also added a pendant design in there to show the device that she uses to transmit her magic to the king.
Next up I moved onto the shadows, this phase took a very long time as I wasn't sure how much shadow effect I was supposed to put on the creases to show that the robes flow smoothly, I kept getting too precious with the piece and ended up going over the same part a few times, similar to my final seer piece, however after multiple drawing attempts and research tutorials I was able to come to a happy conclusion, I decided to give rough shadows to the other designs to get the idea of where the shadows are on the body to save time. After that came the highlights, this process didn't take as long as the shadows because I had an idea of where the highlights should be in comparison to the shadows to give a better dramatic effect.
Finishing the design with final details such as the skin on the full body and adding extra shadows around the cloak and hood, with this done I was ready to move onto the model sheet.
Week 24 Summary:
Once the character sheet was complete I decided to finish off the concept designs with a model sheet for the character. I used a female model sheet that I found online, and draw out her design from it, later cleaning up the lineart.
With the lineart done I was able to quickly add the base colour scheme and create the gradient highlights routine that I used in the few last pieces, this once again sets the mood for the lighting and shadows, with the centre of the dress being lighter and the edges and ends of the dress being darker, with the dirt edges on the bottom of the dress.
When I was working on the shadows I made an inquiry with one of the tutors about the value of the shadow, at which point I was informed of a mistake I had made. I forgot to take into account the thickness of the cloth, and there weren't enough creases on the dress. The understanding is that thinner clothing will have more creases as opposed to thicker clothing. Primarily I wanted to have her wearing thicker cloth robes, but I needed to make the cloths on the arms thinner to make sure it isn't heavy. So I changed up the creases and thickness of the shadows to give a better impression that the sleeves weren't that heavy.
Once I had sorted my shadows problem, I finished the design with adding highlights to help create the depth of the cloth on the character. With that done I added the final details including skin texture and eyes, at this point I was finished with the character designs and the only thing left was the final image design, however I'm leaving that until I've finished all the design's for my characters. The overall creation process for this was slow in my mind and I think I could have kept a better time management, I intend to use this method of creative design on my next character to produce better content at a faster rate.
Week E1-E3 Summary:
With the holidays now upon me I needed to step up my workflow or else I would fall behind, with that I decided to create the concept design for my final character The King. I started with the facial and hair iterations first instead of the clothing, I had chosen Mads Mikkelson as the face for my character. Like the witch I started with a base and created three pieces of designs mainly focusing on the hair iterations, adding in a couple of facial scars if I thought it would look good. My process mainly involved me looking at medieval kings and lords for their hair designs, for some of the designs I looked at viking lords and the use of the braided beard which I considered an idea. In the end I chose the last design on the last piece.
Using the research I collected from last term, I began working on the armour designs for The King's outfit. I used pinterest and general online armour image research looking into armour outfits from Medieval times, Czechoslovakian times and Greek time to further look for ideas into what I could create. For the designs I thought about the armour patterns and what would look cool, but wouldn't take forever to create, I focused mainly on giving the designs armour skirts that went over the top half of the legs instead of making full leg armour, I also considered giving him a cape in some designs as he is a king. I partially struggled on the shoulder pads at times as they where difficult to come up with new pattern designs. In the end I was able to come up with twenty designs which I think are unique and stand out in a few ways.
After completing the initial designs for the armour pieces like last time I chose three designs from the last piece and began developing them further, with these designs I primarily looked at Czechoslovakian armour and knights to finalise the outfits, I wanted to find armour that looked impressive but didn't take forever to draw, I also wanted to incorporate the country symbol onto the armour to show that it represents fighting for its country. For the first piece my favourites are the third & fourth one, and for the second piece my favourites are the first & fourth one.
Here is the finalised armour concept, I mainly used designs from the first iterative piece however using parts from the fourth design on the second iterative piece. I originally wanted to have his crown be around his helmet but after asking for advice I was told that it would be better if his crown was merged into his helmet. I then added different value settings to see which worked better.
Adding the first colour schemes with the colours from the armour moodboards I collected from my research I wanted to choose a colour that made people realise he was a king, so I was focused on the idea of the stripes being gold, or a warm similar colour, but making sure they balance with the rest of the armour. Following that up with the gradient layer to set a mood for the shadows and highlights to get an idea of amour detail.
Now that the outfit and facial designs had been completed I starting on the character sheet, creating the rough sketches I used images from pinterest which showed off various battle stances and situations the king would be in. I imagined The King would mainly keep a serious face so I used some more Mads pictures for facial poses, finally I made six sword designs from previous image research, the sword is used to channel The Witch's magic through him. Once the designs where complete I cleaned them up with proper lineart design.
When coming up with the colours I referred back to the colour schemes I made when finalising the armour designs and chose the colours I thought best suited the design. However after adding in the gradient layers I decided that the colours didn't match what I wanted to so I went and scrapped the initial colour scheme and changed the colour to a more blue grey colour to help better bring out the armour shadows & highlights.
Changing the colour scheme because the initial colour was and made the piece harder to read, this colour scheme reads much better and works just as well as the grey armour colour.
Once I had finalised on the colours I wanted I began adding the shadows and highlights. This process did take the longest of the piece, but I felt proud of the result and what able to clearly tell the layout of the armour better, and show where the metal reflects the light.
Tidying up and adding final details to finish the piece.
I started on model sheet for the king, using the same model sheet pose from the seer I quickly did the lineart for the King's model sheet. When I was doing basic lineart & colour I was also doing the character sheets next to each other, so once I finished the colour on one I did it on the other one. Once I realised I wanted to change the initial colour scheme on the armour & clothes I had to redo it as well on the model sheet so I ended up with the same mistake on the model sheet as the character sheet.
After I decided to change the colour I was able to continue the piece without any worries, it didn't take long to add the gradient effects to the armour, with that done I was able to start on the shadows & highlights.
Once the colours where done, I moved onto the shadows, thanks to having already done them on the character sheet, I knew exactly where to put them and it didn't take long to add in the details. Following the shadows came the highlights, I was able to get these done pretty quickly as the Uni was open again and I was able to finish as they where simply adding light where the armour reflects.
Adding the final details and polishing the model sheet to a finished state. With this all the concept art I wanted to do for the king was complete and the only piece left was the final character piece, however I wanted to finish the rest of my concept pieces for all my characters first before the final pieces where developed.
Week 25 Summary:
Before I was able to start on the final images I had to finish the horse design, so I took some images of horses off the internet, (see below) and drew out the line art for them. In the previous term I created a design which I really liked but I felt as though it was missing something. I then came up with the idea to give him flaming mutton chops with the scenario is that the flames are coming out of his mouth but attached to the side of his face instead of flowing off from a point on the mouth, this way I can make it so the flames merge with the flames on the mane of the hair. After the design I started with the basic colour, I used my old iteration as a design template for the rest of the character sheet.
With the lineart finished I started on the horse details, giving a design of the overall muscle structure and shape of the body, thanks to my design it didn't take me long to draw the shadow and highlight details onto the horse. I decided to remove the flames from the upper legs of the horse, as they looked like hair more than flames. I moved them to the feet to create the concept of the horse running on fire, overall this looks better on the Horse's design and helps me when drawing the feet, as that was the most difficult part of the piece to draw.
The finished process of the Flaming Horse character sheet, I added a few extra details into his design. Primarily the breathing hatches around the body which are designed to release more flames if the horse is spooked, angered or various emotions such as joy and fear. The birthmark on its forehead will glow the main flame colours, as a sign it is getting ready to attack, where the birthmark heats up and burn the same as the flames on the body, with that the birthmark creates a white dot, when the third dot appears the horse can shoot flames out of its body through the hatches, this works as both an attack and defensive mechanism. Then finishing this piece with flaming the eyebrows and making the eyes white with a hypnotising flame in the iris, this also functions as his main survival skill, his eyes work in the way of making his prey want to ride him, so when they do so, the flames on his body burning them to ashes and consumes the flames as nutrition. His powers do not work on those he trusts such as the king and the seer as both are immune to this effect, the King due to The Witch's magic through his sword and The Seer through his own magic.
With the concept and ideas around the horse complete I moved onto creating a model sheet I found it difficult to find a model sheet reference of a horse due to the pose not looking right or it being the wrong breed of horse, in the end I was able to find a image of a 3d horse model sheet on google images (image below) which I used to create the lineart and shape of the body, it took me a while when doing the legs as I had to swap the back legs round and re-draw them for the other side of the horse. Once the lineart was done I added the base colour and the background.
First I started with the flames when detailing the body using images from cgtextures.com I was able to quickly create an idea of how the flames looked on the horse. Once I had the layout of the flames done, I used the colour balance along with the hue & saturation tools to change the colour scheme to the blue-purple colour design I had chosen for him.
Finishing the details on the flames I added a lighter blue in areas which where closer to the skin to give a better render, with the flames complete I moved onto rendering the details of the horses body. This process didn't take long as I had already drawn out similar processes with the character sheet and initial colour schemes in the last term, the model sheet in which this was referenced also helped tremendously in understanding where the highlights and shadows would be most effective. After that was complete I finished the piece with adding in the hatches on the skin where flames would intentionally shoot out depending on the horse's emotions and the flaming eyebrows.
The Return of the King:
With the horse iterations complete, all that was left of my characters was the final images to complete, so I started these pieces with returning to my King character as I had already done a quick sketch a while back of the pose I wanted to draw him in. This idea was scrapped almost immediately because I didn't like the body proportions, mainly around the head and neck. So I started looking for poses with a bit more flow and action in them, finding a pose that caught my interest on Pinterest. (I later found out that my reference image was done by Kekai Kotaki who is known for his artwork of armour in the Guild Wars games).
Once the lineart was done, I was ready to start painting the piece. I started by painting a quick background with some cloud brushes to set the mood, then came the face. Using the reference picture I created the basic layout of the face with shadows and highlights leaving the skin tone at a darker colour to match the background and adjust later after the armour had been completed, and after a few tries was able to get a face that looked like Mads Mikkelson. When the face had enough detail to recognise the character I moved onto the clothes starting with the cloth under the armour, I worked on the trousers but was unsure about the folds in the creases, after looking at a couple of examples I then proceeded to change the creases in the trousers design, this came out a lot better and easily more readable. I then followed it the trousers with the arms, which didn't take long, adding small sharp highlights around the bottom of the trousers and arms where I wanted the light to hit the most.
I started working on the armour on the bottom half of the body, however after a few hours of trial and error the armour looked more like cloth than metal, I was really struggling, so I went to advice from the tutors and was told that metal in all dark and that the light from metal is always what is being reflected around it, and while I have an idea of where the metal is being reflective, I need to think of how it would be readable.
Week 26 Summary:
Over the weekend I decided to take a step back and do some image research into metal reflective surfaces, and after a while came up with the solution to draw with the concept that made me use the smudge tool to create a blending effect, after that adding in strips of a dark shadow on the darker parts of the armour and strips of a light highlights on the lighter parts and blend them in to get a more reflective look. I also decided to strip the armour around the waist down a bit as it didn't look right when applying this method, instead of going for a wavy flowing armour sheets, I made the armour look firmer, like in the character sheet.
After I figured out how I was going to draw my metal I moved onto drawing the chest armour, this didn't take very long as I essentially needed to make sure that there was a major reflective spot on the right half of the chest and a bounce light on the edge of the left side.
Moving onto completing the armour on the arms, and shoulders, for the shoulder pads, it took a couple of try's to get it looking right, eventually I created a design that looked good enough, that angle was incredibly difficult to detail. I am really impressed with myself on the lower half of the arms and the elbow pads, after reworking them, they look a lot more believable. Once they where done I finished off the armour designs with the helmet which took me a little longer than the others because of the crown layout and getting the reflective surfaces on that, in the end I was able to come to a solution I admired.
Before I return to the face the last part I need to do is the sword, this didn't take long as I just needed to make sure the light hit the crystals in the sword at the right angle, thanks to the lineart I was able to quickly bump out the details needed to understand the swords design and patterns on the handle.
With the armour, body and sword complete, I returned to focus on the face. I started with the eyes and reshaping them slightly, making them bigger and moving the eyebrows so them looked the same as in the picture. Next was adjusting the lips, cheek structure, and making the head a tad smaller. Once that was done I made the next leap and with the biggest change since the last picture and changed the skin tone and under clothing using the colour balance & hue saturation filters, after that I adjusted the skin a bit more with the levels tool and the brightness and contrast tool, the result was beginning to show progress.
Continuing on from the last image where I darkened the edges and added the shadows around the cheekbones by using a mask layer and shading in on the darker areas, afterwards using another mask tool and lightened the middle to show off blending detail options, following up by using the brightness & contrast tool to bring out the highlights of the face. I also added in some pale red to give a bit of life in the cheeks.
After adding in more details to the skin once the mood was set I changed the skin tone again by using the lighting and contrast with another mask tool. When I did the first background it was to get a sense of the surrounding colour, now I returned to finish it and blend it with the pose. Originally I wanted the king to be coming out of the clouds, with trails of cloud following the sword and armour, however after a few try's the piece didn't look right and got in the way of the details on the body. So I ended up using the cloud brushes to create darker clouds around the lower left half of the painting to draw the eye of the viewer to the top
Adding in final details in the iris, by creating the reflective lights, adjusting the lighting and contrast slightly on the entire body to make the reflections shine brighter. Adding in a focus light beam to give an idea of where the light was coming from, throwing in shadows around the armour next to the face, also where the face meet the helmet and adding in the beard. The beard doesn't stand out very well due to the amount of light so I will adjust the saturation and lighting on the beard to bring the darkness out a bit, enough to make in more visible.
The First Finished Final Piece, I loosened the shadows around the face a little more so see the face better and changed the softened the lighting on the helmet a bit. I am extremely proud of how this one turned out and hopefully can apply that to the rest of my designs and create more works like this in the future.
Before I could continue with the other pieces I had to finish off the piece that had been hanging over my back for so long now, the piece that had put my entire schedule out of balance, the final seer piece, I had learnt from doing this before that I took way too long and spent a lot of time worrying over the smallest details which didn't look noticeable from a zoomed out perspective. However after drawing my king piece I was feeling much more confident in completing this piece, I had already done the clothing and the layout of the face, I just wanted to render it to a high enough quality of detail.
First up I focused on fixing the arm which needed to be moved down and have the hand resting on the scarf instead of the waist, afterwards I cleaned up the coat waist adding in a few more creases and highlights around where the bounce light would hit the clothing. Once that was done I started moving onto the face, mainly focusing on the eyes and making them more believable. I had a talk with the tutors as I was struggling with the right eye and making in look more curved, I needed to make the lower eyelid move up further, this caused me to rearrange the face structure a little such as making the edge of the mouth in line with his iris, and reshaping the nose. Next I moved the cheekbone up a little, blending and softening up around the edges.
One of my major problems I was having with this was rendering the hair, due to the fact I didn't have to do any in the last piece other than add a beard I was having trouble getting the flow of the hair to look believable from where it's roots started. Then I realised the big problem, the direction of the hair looked wrong, so the image below demonstrates that the hair starts out coming out of the skull, going out in front of the face and curving round towards the back. Instead what it needs to do is go out from the skull, up and then flow straight backwards as though it's resting on his head.
After I realised what was wrong and how to fix the hair, I spent the next hour working on creating the flow of the hair line, using a few different brushes to create a general hair look. I wanted to have his hair be majorly dark but have strips of white in there due a side effect if his magic. I then started focusing on the ear, and had a few attempts at re-positioning the ear but it didn't look right so I ended up leaving it in the angle it was and adding a bit more detail to it, I then added some more shadow to the right side of the face to bring the left side out more. With this it is starting to look like a finished piece but still needs a little more work before I can call it complete.
Over the weekend, I needed to create the environments, coming up with quick sketches for my tow pieces, one which will have a country landscape with a city somewhere in the piece and the second one a bridge scene with an outline of the seer and the king fighting over the flaming horse.
Using the Feng Zhu Design video (below) I dragged some images that I liked for the sketches and motion blurred the images to create a collage of colour to start the piece off, I started over the weekend and will continue doing this at home while I finish the final character pieces at uni.
Week 27 Summary:
Heading into the second to last week I wanted to finish my seer character by the end of the day, I was close to finishing this piece but I needed to make changes to the skin tone and add blending details to bring the piece to life more. I made some adjustments with the various colour filtering options such as the colour balance and hue/saturation tools. While doing this I noticed a major problem with my piece, the left arm looked out of place and had to redraw the position of the arm, I spent about an hour fixing this problem and while it looked better I was annoyed that I could've seen this problem and fixed it much earlier in the piece.
After I fixed the arm position I moved onto rendering the skin to a more defined detail. I duplicated my piece and blurred him to give him a shadow, in doing so I had to brighten the entire piece, while I thought this was good for the character I didn't think that the back shadow was a good feature so I removed it. I added a mask to the skin to help give a better contrast of the shadows on the face and then created a small white highlight strip going around the left side of the face and the outline of the hair to help bring the piece out a bit from the background. Continuing on I created another mask to give better perception of the shadows and highlights on the body and face, next colour blending to make the skin tone more defined. With this I am close to completing the piece I just need to make a major adjustment before I can call this piece complete.
With the Face near finished I needed to add the beard to complete the piece, this didn't take as long as I thought it would, as I had already done a beard beforehand with my King piece, I did struggle with the highlights and getting them to be a better colour, but ultimately I was happy with the design and I needed to finish the piece to start the next one. With the beard complete I added another mask and blended the skin colours with hue/saturation & colour blending tools.
Rendering the final details and with that, The Seer character concept piece was finished. I am really happy and relieved that I was able to finish this piece as I had spent so long on this piece, and I felt a little concerned by the fact I left it until now, but I'm glad I decided to step away from this piece and return to it after finishing the rest of my concept designs. I am feeling more confident heading into the rest of the week and completing all my work for submission.
With the Seer character finally finished I was able to move onto the third piece of my four character final pieces, The Witch. I felt a lot better about achieving my goals going into this piece as I had already completed half of my character pieces and I had a good understanding of the art style and what I need to make the piece stand out better. I started with finding a reference image, after searching for a while I came across an image of Tilda Swinton in a unique pose and seeing the potential, I sketched it out however I had to adjust the pose slightly as the left hand covered up the a good chunk of the body pose. Once I was comfortable with the position of the left hand I cleaned up the sketch with lineart and added the initial colours.
With the initial design complete I was ready to start the details, first came the skin on the arm, this felt the easiest part to do as well, this also set the skin template for the colours I wanted to use, I wanted to have more of a warmer colour than the reference image provided. I spent a good hour on the elbow because I was having trouble shaping it, I overcame this problem by softening the shadows under the arm and making the highlight edges much sharper.
Once I was happy with the elbow shape and the details on the skin, I began on the shadows to the dress and cloak adding details to the clothes starting with the dress robe. I then moved onto creating the face details this proved to be a challenge as I struggled to get the concept of the head right, even with the lineart I felt like the nose and mouth didn't work properly, however once I started softening the details on the skin I was able to work out where the edges should be sharper to understand the mouth better. Also adjusting the background with a green blur around the character.
One of my fellow students helped me realise a big flaw in my piece that the dress looks stuck onto the skin like a bodysuit and needs to flow more naturally. To fix this I softened the shadows around the breasts creating creases under it and the cloth underneath, then adding more cloth on the left side of the dress to give the idea of the dress flowing round as if the character is turning, darkening the shadows in the sleeves and under the sleeves. Once I was happy with the design of the dress I returned to render the face, focusing on redefining the shadows and highlights, fixing the eye details and filtering the iris with a brighter colour, reshaping the mouth to a more readable standard. At this point the face was defiantly becoming more recognisable, I continued to work on the skin details, darkening the far side of the face, and adding more shadows, with that I tried out a new highlight option which used a white overlay on top of the highlights, this made the piece shine so much better. At this point I felt finished with the skin details, I'll return to them when I will be blending the character with the background. Next came the hair design, this was simple enough, using a brush pack to speed up the process and give a more natural hair look. When I finished the hair I took a chance and added in green highlight outlines where I thought the light of her magic would reflect off the skin and clothes, when I add in the magic effects I will be able to tell if if works well.
On the Friday of the week I entered the day with the goal to complete the piece, so I started on the background and blending in the magic to it, while doing so I was given some advice from the tutor to fix the direction of the dress creases to make the idea of her turning more believable. I adjusted the dress details accordingly giving the creases a more looser and better look to them, then once I adding in a few more reflective magic light onto the dress I was able to continue blending the piece with the background. This process was simple enough, I created green lines to give the sensation of a magic flow stream, using Motion blur on the lines behind the character and Gaussian blur on the lines in front, creating sharp white lines where the magic streams would begin. At this phase the piece was near completion, it just needed a little more adjustments to the colour before I could call it finished.
With this piece near completion I just wanted to add a few filters to make the piece stand out more, however first I decided to add some light to the background to make it look as though she is looking at something. I then added a brightness/contrast filter over the top to dip the lighting down removing the shadows where the lights would be and then added a few colour balance filters to bring the colours and highlights out better, this defiantly helped blend the piece together and after adding in a couple more highlights on the skin tones I had finished the piece. This piece took the quickest time and by far is my favourite due to the amount of detail I was able to create, I feel extremely proud I was able to develop my level of drawing skills over the past couple of weeks for my final submissions.
Continuing on from last week where I started my environments I used the Feng Zhu video to get an idea of detailing the environments. I struggled at first to get my head around creating the shapes out of the blurred images, but after a while the concepts started to take shape, I mainly left the cities very blurry to show that there is a lot of information at this point. I liked the idea of my city being hidden in the mountains or on a cliff-side so for a few of them I mainly went for a more rocky terrain. For the left middle city piece I originally wanted it to be a floating city however I had trouble drawing the clouds so I rendered it into a sea which I thought looked much nicer than my initial thought, I ended up spending much longer on these pieces than I would have liked to because I felt the need to make them look at detailed as possible, I had this problem when I made some thumbnails last term, hopefully I won't encounter this problem when creating my final environment pieces.
Week 28 Summary:
Here we are on the final week on the project, and I have to finish everything by the end of the week, I still needed to finish my final character piece, the flaming horse, and the two environment pieces, I plan to spend the first half on the horse and the other half on the environments. Starting with the Flaming Horse Piece I was a little more unsure with the pose I should do him in, with this I ended up experimenting with a few poses, in the end finally settling on one that would show off the important features but wouldn't take long due to time consideration.
Reference
Once I decided on the the pose and drew out the sketch and basic lineart I began working on the piece with colour. I started with the flames taking textures and editing them to make it look like they where coming off the horse, next came the colour balance change with some help from the hue/saturation tool, before finishing the flames off by adding golden flames around the horse in an attempt to show the horse running through the flames as in my reference image.
With the flames done, the next phase was the head and main body. The initial details didn't take long, it was easy enough from previous work and the references to figure out where the muscles on the horse where however it became tougher when I started applying more details to the piece. The head was the biggest problem of the day, I struggled to get the head proportions right and ended redoing the head shape a few times. I was able to counter this problem with the help of an Alfred Munnings piece and some classmates who helped point out where the anatomy looked wrong, the biggest problem was the placement of the eye, when I added the fur shadows on the birthmark I was able to counter the eye problem and adjust it to a better angle, I then added it rough shadows around the highlights of the face to give the sensation of fur on the animal.
Once the head was done I moved onto the body, I didn't spend too long on this as was mainly highlights and some rough shadows to indicate fur, I then added the hatches into the piece which pushed out the highlights more and added the flaming eyelashes to the piece. With this I felt that the main body was done except for blending with the environment around him, but first I wanted to edit the flames a little. I duplicated the flame layers and changed the colour like with the body flames, next removing some of the purple flames in an attempt to make it look like the purple and golden flames where merging, lowering the opacity further away from the main body, this process turned out a lot better than what I thought it would.
With the Horse piece finished I moved onto the last pieces of my project the final environment pieces, in my learning agreement I said I would do two pieces, one of a bridge battle and the other of the enemy city. I started with the bridge battle scene, choosing my favourite as well as a number of fellow students and attempted to define it in the style of Mathias Zamecki, who I had talked about last term. I began with selecting images off pinterest and google and using Zamecki's work as an example starting painting, later after I had tried a few different brushes to reach his style I found it easier to simply paint the piece rather than try to find images off the internet and photo manipulate them, so I left my photos to one side and primarily focused on painting over the initial sketch in Zamecki's style.
Continuing on from yesterday with finishing the first environment piece, I was able to quickly render out the further rock in the background as they didn't need that much detail then started working on the ridges in front of the bridge. This part was the hardest in my opinion as I ended up going over the pathway a few times to get a better colour balance, as well as the rock face underneath the path that connected to the river, I was able to render this well with the use of dark orange highlights and the loose rocks on the bank and in the river. Next came the bridge, this didn't take too long as I used the same practice with the riverbank, drawing out the bridge details and then removing bits here and there to give it the look that its crumpled and broken in two. After that came the river, this was simple enough, I just used different shades of the pink orange colour I chose for the river, adding in a light blue on top. The last major edit was the sky, using the image reference I picked a dark blue top, with a white light shining the horizon line filtering the middle with shades of pink, orange, brown and blue to give a sunrise setting to the piece, blending with the colour on the rocks. I finished the piece with some extra shadows and highlights where were needed and added two silhouettes for scale comparison. I was really amazed at the result and speed of this piece, it gave me a massive confidence boost for finishing the next piece and consider creating an art style similar to this for the future.
With all the character pieces and first environment piece done the only piece left to do on my list was the second environment piece. I began by duplicating some of the layers that looked similar from my last piece into the new piece and using them to get the general colour scheme, the front cliff side rock was similar to the last one so that saved some time, then I worked on the further-est cliff side on the other side of the painting to try and get an idea of the cliff shape, reflection coming off it and the size of the walkway. Next came the path way with the character on it, this took a while to figure out as the slope in the original sketch didn't look right and I had a lot of trouble with the underside of the cliff. I was able to overcome this by constantly referring back to the way I did it in the last piece and thinking where the shadows and highlights would be most effective. Once that was the the underside cliff further away took no problem to complete and the ground above only took a couple of minutes. The city was an easy enough sketch, I took a shot of London from an angle, blurred it and did some rough paints over, the sky was essentially the same as the last piece but with a few changes to the light direction. I finished this piece by adding in some cloud filter for dramatic effect and my character for scale effect. This was also a lot of fun to make and I can defiantly see myself using or creating an art style to this type similar in the future for both environmental and character pieces.
Outside of Uni: Finding A Job!
Jobs keep popping up on websites like Linkedin & Artstation every day, I know it’s a hard market but there’s no harm in trying to apply for a job, also I applied to present and do a demonstration of my work at the Norwich Gaming Festival in a couple of weeks, that is a good place to meet new friends and potential clients, overall these experiences while small, will hopefully lead to an amazing opportunity for me.
Evaluation: Final thoughts about the project.
Looking back on my brief I set myself at the beginning of the year, I’m glad I was able to reach that goal with all this work, I defiantly admit there was a problem at the start of the project where I struggled with a piece for three weeks, however that got me more motivated to finishing this goal and delivering what I have promised. My Plan was to create four characters, two environments and a barrage of concept art and information to back that up and I feel I have succeeded in this very well, my proudest pieces are indeed the final pieces as I wanted them to leave an impact on people and I have receiving some great reactions from people.
I have learnt so many new things from doing this project, from designing small sketch ideas into fully rendered 2D character pieces. Originally I made the option to create another character after reaching my objective, however that objective fell short as I have learnt not to jump the gun getting super stressed over one piece and focus on developing my artwork more at my own pace, when I tried to create a final piece at the beginning of the term I ended up spending three weeks getting barely anywhere and it cost me big time, but from that failure I was able to come back from that and create a new style of iterations and evolve my artwork to a new level. One of my biggest surprises on this journey was the speed and development of my final environment pieces; considering how concerned I was last term when I followed the Feng Zhu videos on photo manipulation, Zamecki’s style felt more natural and comforting to create, giving me a new insight into environment pieces in general. I attempted this style because I liked the painterly theme and renderings of the landscapes Zamecki created.
I am incredibly happy with how the characters turned out in the end as one on my biggest concerns was that could I deliver what I promised with the setback I had at the beginning of term. I really felt like I understood what it means to be a concept artist a bit more and the obstacles you need to overcome to reach it, I chose this project because I wanted to create unique and interesting characters in art styles that amaze and inspire the viewer, just as those artists inspire me, and thanks to this project I can see how these pieces are made and how I can use my skills to bring these pieces to life.
This project has helped me become one step closer to reaching my goal of finding a job as a concept artist in the games industry, having the knowledge to create beautifully rendered pieces of artwork, wondering how far I can evolve this technique, while I haven’t caught anyone’s eye yet, this is the perfect time to work on creating a grand portfolio, and hopefully obtaining my dream job.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Receiving the University Experience and how it has changed me:
When I first arrived at NUA 3 years ago I barely had any knowledge of using digital art, when I submitted my first major art piece in December 2014 I learnt how to draw in Photoshop properly, now I look back on it and I see a major Level Up of skill and drawing ability. Coming to University has also given me many life experiences that I am grateful for, while I admit I sometimes got too preoccupied with finishing my project work I would miss out on some talks that could of helped out in the future, but overall I don’t have any doubt of wasting my time here at university.
My plans for the future are to increase my abilities even further by applying and taking the master’s course here at NUA, I am hoping that it will give me the chance to stand above the others and get noticed by companies, while I am searching I have plans to upgrade my portfolio as well as big ideas for an interesting game. University has really helped me grow not just as an artist, but as a person learning what it’s like to be a part of the games industry world.
2014
2017
Three Year Practice difference: Level Up?
