Environment Piece: Final Touches

I added the sky and was ready to call it a day but then I decided to tweak it a bit.

I added a black in the background to see how that would work. It gives it a more ominous feel but I'm not sure that's what I wanted.

I also decided to tweak the sky and have one with the ominous look and one without.

I think that I'm going to go with the last one, the one with the tweaked sky and ominous feel to it.

Environment Piece: The Temple and Foregound

I needed to add a lot more detail to the biggest building in the environment which I felt was going to be hard to make it feel like a part of the overall piece. I also went ahead and started to add white highlights.

I was satisfied with how the textured roofs where coming out so I kept going with that level of detail. I'm also very happy with the foreground character and building.

Environment Piece: Painting Continues

I finished the vegetation and added an outline to the foreground elements. I feel that it works on this piece fairly well and helps add a separation from the rest which adds depth. On top of that I added the waterfalls, mist, and smoke.

Now that all of that is done, I started to work on the buildings

I was finding that the loose painting technique wasn't working as well with the man made things as with the organic. I went in and added more subtle colored outlines to help define the structure more.

Environment Piece: Start Painting!

So I did the outline in blue line and decided to add a huge tree in the background to make sense of the giant roots going through the buildings.

I'm pretty happy with where the painting is going so far. It's not as loose as the background in the character piece but it's not super tight either. It still manages to carry a loose painterly feel to it.

Environment Piece: Sketches

Now I need to get started on my environment piece. I don't have anything clear cut in mind so I just started to sketch various types of buildings.

I then started to just make a sketch of an environment. I really like the second one I did so I decided to go with it.

Character Piece: Still Not Done?!

 I'm happy with what I have and I'm really happy with how the eyes came out. The only problem is some of the details get lost when zoomed out. So I wanted to just post some closer pictures of the character and face.

So after showing my professor my finished piece he wanted me to trim the background to make the character more of a focus, which I'm okay with, and to add an outline on the character, which I'm hesitant about.

The professor used a photoshop filter to show me the outline that he was talking about.

I agree that the outline does make her stand out more, but I don't like the excessive use of outline done by the filter, and the face is completely squentialized. I decided to give it a shot by hand.

Truth is that even after doing it by hand, I don't want there to be an outline. I think the cropping and having her centered already makes the viewer's eye focus on her and adding an outline takes away from the whole look I was trying to go for in the first place. Maybe I just need less outline but I don't feel like it needs it at all. I've decided to stick with no outline as my final piece.

Character Piece: Final Background Touches

I've started to put the final touches on my background and then accidentally turned on the layers for the abstract wave. I liked the colors showing through so I decided to keep them in the background.

I also went ahead and added some more highlights on her and some sun beams coming through the leaves.

Character Piece: Readjustments and Backgrounds

I have further readjusted the character's foot to be coming more towards the viewer. I've been informed that the arm furthest away from the viewer is in an uncomfortable position. I did this because I was copying the Tarzan pose and because I feel that like Spider-Man, it helps to push the idea of flexibility. Spider-Man is always doing weird poses with what would be uncomfortable contortions, but it helps define the way he moves; I want to do the same with my character.

With my character done, I need to start working up a quick background in which to put her in. I thought about going really abstract but what I came up with was not really pleasing.

The abstract background looked like a psychedelic wave and she's surfing on nothing. I needed to put her in a more stable area and her feet needed to be on something solid. I decided to just put her on a very thick branch like the Tarzan picture I based my piece off of. Looking at the Tarzan picture though, he's not really on the branch. I want the viewer to understand where she's at, but I didn't want the background to be as tight as the character since it's not the focus. I wanted to mimic the long heavy brushstrokes.

Character Piece: Starting Again

Not liking what I was making I asked for advise from some fellow classmates and I'm very glad that I did so. One of them also gave me a custom brush that he made and it gave the appearance of a brush stroke. The other classmate has some experience in painting so she was able to advise me on techniques and color choices.

My painting is starting to come along rather nicely and after talking with my professor, I've made some anatomical changes to the figure. I changed the foot so now it's not broken and I've fixed the elbow area.
I've also started to add blues and greens to the skin tones, something I've picked up from using water color in the past. The hair I feel came out rather decent but it was recommended that I add some stray strands as well since she's in motion.

Character Piece: Getting Started

I took the line drawing I did on the computer based off the sketch and started to just color on top of it. I started with very flat colors.

 

I then took the flat colors and lowered the opacity to 20% to use as a guide while I painted on top of it. I also wanted to have the low flats in case of any white spots I might leave when painting so that the correct color still shows through the holes.

I proceeded to paint on top of it and this how it was coming out. I didn't like it since it still had a very prominent outline and the painting didn't feel as loose as I would have liked.

Hair Braids

So I have been drawing my character with a braid but have been drawing it in a way that's implied as opposed to actually being shown. I need to know how a braid works so I can render it more realistically on my final digital painting. Here are some reference photos that I will look into using.

I'm noticing that the way the braid starts on all of these is different from how I have been drawing mine. You don't get to see the back of her head in the digital painting but it's nice to know how it would work.

Further Posture Sketches

While I do like how the Tarzan posture looks with my character and I feel it does capture her abilities rather well. I want to do something that's more original from my head. I came up with some more sketches trying to capture that same feel. I also went ahead and put the original sketch of the Tarzan pose I did.

After talking with my professor about the other poses it was decided that I should just use the Tarzan pose. Reason being that there isn't really anything original anyways and the others don't convey the same parkour like abilities so it's the best one to go with. I do like the other ones but I have to agree that they just show she can fight, not really navigate a destroyed city by climbing trees and broken buildings.

Posture and Final Color Choices

I chose to look more at Tarzan since the world I'm working on has a lot of vegetation as well. I really like how this came out; her ankle on her left leg is broken though, I need to fix that. After some more discussion with a fellow classmate I have these three color samples as my final choices.

At first I was leaning more towards the third color sample just because It has a tad bit more variation but after some more discussion, I think I'll go with the middle choice. I want her to be able to be visible and set apart from a predominately blue and green environment. In reality she would be wearing similar colors but for the sake of the player not losing track of her, I want her color palette to be different. I'm thinking that the second outfit which has more brown in it can also be used as better camo for tree bark, dirt, and certain types of buildings.

Some Posture Sketches

I'm drawing her in several postures just to try to get a feel for how she moves. Some I like, others I don't.

Looking at these now though, I don't feel like any of them really capture that same feel that the Spider-Man and Tarzan postures give. It's been recommended to me that I try taking one of those references and just drawing her in it. I think I'll do that.

Character Sketch and Color Samples

Right now I'm not focusing on the posture of the character but just her look and the color of her outfit. This is the original sketch of her and some color samples.

I came up with 35 different color combinations and then cut that down by half and then I cut it in half again. The final eight where the ones I felt strongest about. After some discussion with fellow classmates though I am looking back at some of the other ones that I threw out.

Posture Reference

I want my character to have a nimble look to them and I want to find the right posture that both shows what her abilities are and her personality. As a scout she will have a lot of crouching type postures so I wanted to look at Spider-Man and Tarzan as my main sources of inspiration; they crouch a lot but are still very mobile and fast. I also looked at some other references.