Character Key art - Pre review

 Rebs -

For my Rebs character key art I wanted to go with an action pose of Katya using her hook and collar against a GCPS soldier. I first started out with a more zoomed out shot but thought it would be more impactful if I brought the characters a little closer to the viewer. Refining my sketch further I asked my peers how I could improve upon this sketch, originally the chain was overlapping with the hook and made it difficult to discern what was going on, and this was something my peers picked up on for me to change. The other piece of advice I got was to exaggerate the curve of the soldiers spine more to make the pose more dynamic. By implementing these changes i not only think the pose is easier to read but the more exaggerated pose really helps show the struggle of the soldier. From here I wanted to try digital painting again so that my art piece would better fit in with the more realistic style of the Deadzone artwork. I first blocked in my values having my light source coming from the bottom left of the canvas. From here I refined these areas of dark and light to build up the forms and add definition to the piece. I noticed an error with Katya's design, I initially gave her a 5 fingered hand much like a human, when looking at the pre-existing artwork and models of the Sphyr race, they have 3 fingers. This was a simple fix, I only had to colour over the separations between the first and second finger, and the third and fourth finger. I left the background somewhat bare, I am hopefully going to define these shapes as crates to help imply my character's sneaky nature, but as the main focus was supposed to be the figures in the foreground [who are already very detailed] I wanted to use the background as an area of rest in detail to help separate these two elements. Overall I am very happy with the outcome so far, however I do feel there is something off about the GCPS soldier's face, I am going to ask my tutor on Thursday for advice on how I can make him look less off.

Marauders -

For my Marauders piece, I utilized the 3D model I had made once again so that I could experiment with angles but still have an accurate design. My idea was to have the gun turret pointing down at the viewer with the goblin standing on top, perhaps with the Hogg residing within some sort of scrapyard or storage facility. I took 3 different screenshots of different angles, Eventually settling on the bottom one where I had added in some crate props to have a bit more interest in the scene. From here I then drew over the top of my model and blocked in the turret goblin before moving onto the line art stage. I wanted to render this in the same manner that I had done with the Rebs key art just so they remained congruent, I made a good start on the goblin and one of the panels, but thought it best to get some feedback first before rendering the metal just as it takes quite a while to do and if I need to change anything better to do it on a non fully rendered piece. I did however add some rust and wear details by finding a rust texture on Pexels [which was free to use] and photobashing it on top of my design. I did this by first lowering the saturation and adjusting the contrast before lowering the opacity and setting this layer to a soft light layer. I also used the acrylic sponge brush on the transparent colour to blend the edges of the texture in with the shading and values I had previously created. For atmospheric elements I added in some thick black smoke coming from the Hogg's exhausts along with hazy buildings in the background to imply a dim and foggy environment. To really push this miserable setting I thought the addition of rain would be effective in giving off a dull feeling. I am also really happy with this design and although I am unsure on how I am going to add colour to these pieces, I am going to try to find some tutorials on how to do so.