Practice makes perfect

This is one picture I did recently of a character of my imagining based in the Warcraft universe; a 'pandaren'. It was one of the first time I sat down and set myself to trying to complete as well a drawing as possible. On DeviantArt where I host the picture, I included a brief description as to the process of approaching and completing the drawing.

'I drew it, then was going to uploaded it, then decided to shade it then upload it.. then I coloured it, then- decided to make it greyscale, THEN- added the candle then- added the lighting and THEN I felt happy to upload it.

It was a pretty rough drawing overall but I feel like I've been investing time and effort into pieces that I want to be amazing and not living up to my own expectations. Stuff like this is much more fun and easier to produce and is arguably just as good.'

I still feel the same way about it. The detail in his cloth and the candle received good feedback though I'm just particularly proud of the stance considering I didn't have any reference to go by. I struck a chord of inspiration before doing this drawing and I attribute too much to that. Sometimes I feel that I can't draw if I don't have that same inspiration or can't find it, and I often try to find it through music.

It was mostly improvised but I'm still proud of it and I feel like I am improving. That said there is a lot I could have worked on and I feel I could still work on this drawing and develop it further. For example I made it greyscale partially because I didn't think the standard of the colouring I had done lived up to the line-art, and so I turned it greyscale and it became shaded and far better looking, at least in my own opinion. 

Next time I'll strive to improve on my colouring, something I think I could benefit from greatly. Currently my colours can be very flat.

Same character different drawing method, experimenting with lighting.

Diablo III Contest

I thought I would try my pen at producing a piece of art for Blizzard's Diablo III Character Art contest. I think it is relevant to my practice because of it's involvement with the video game industry as character artwork, which requires the use of character artists to develop in the industry. Whether or not this is the practice I wish to end up in isn't final to me right now (although that said, it would be a dream come true regardless). Even so, that means developing the skills necessary to become a character artist which I currently think I can improve upon.

'There is no time like the present to begin forging an image that is sure to sway our hearts, but remember that any images you submit must wholly be comprised of your own, original imagery, must exceed a resolution of 1600 x 1200, and may be no larger in size than 5 MB.'

Having fulfilled the criteria of entry this is the piece I produced. I believe my work depicts the barbarian character in a fitting manner. The concept was to have him in the aftermath of a bloody battle, fighting off the various demons and monsters that can potentially tear out your throat in the world of Sanctuary. I used my own experience within the game to draw some criteria I wanted to meet,as well. The character wears no armour because I feel it is more fitting of the barbarian character, as does his wielding of two weapons rather than one. I wanted to give him a helmet but I felt like I would be drawing the armour, rather than the actual character, and I the character almost instantly recognizable through his facial hair. His body is little more than a silhouette which I think I could have improved upon with more subtle lighting from surrounding fires. Arguably the outline of his body, and the appearance of his hair with his two weapons, makes this character instantly recognizable as the Diablo III barbarian character. I had several variations and additional layers but ended up removing or not using them. Here is the presence of one layer and I thought I would take a moment to explain it.

In this version the barbarian wears a single shoulderguard. It is meant to be fur or leather with a steel skeletal structure surrounding it, however I was having a hard time depicting the structure as I wanted to portray it and in the end I felt it detracted from his overall appearance and silhouette. I also had the axe removed for the same reason, at the time. I feel it is less characteristic of the character to only have a single weapon.

This was the sky that I had created. Initially the moon was on the left but from the way I had organized the layers, it looked like the moon was in front of the clouds rather than behind them. It also created an imbalance in that the focus of the picture was on the left and there was far too much empty space on the right. In order to re-balance it I shifted the moon to the other side of the picture and made it a larger, crescent moon.

All in all I never thought I had much of a winning chance, but I did learn a things when putting myself to the task. I'm proud of how I manged to produce the barbarian's hair. Although it was a slow process I could do it quicker next time as I have the practice. I'll be using it more often. This overall was an important lesson for me because I have thought previously about going back to basics so that is what I decided to do, take my time and build up the drawing over layers from the back to the front, rather than trying to jump in. I could have done more to augment the silhouette with additional detail, but that is another criticism I can reflect and act upon in the future.