Conquering Frustration

I had another bout of "ugh I can't do this!" and "I suck at drawing!" a few days ago and it pretty much ground my work flow to a halt (not something you want with uni deadlines looming). So I took a step back from photoshop and analysed what it was that was annoying me so much with my work?? Usually with me it's a technical issue, I can't get the hand to look right, the head looks wrong or something else along those lines. The solution?? Get better at that thing! If you can't draw heads (as in my case) draw loads of them, look at tutorials or just look at pictures of people and breakdown them down into simple shapes. Yeah it can be pretty dull but it's worth it for the pay off. Granted I'm still trying to work out how to draw the head at extreme angles but the other angles I think I have nailed pretty well. All this from six to eight hours a day, for the past four days. 

I guess what I am trying to say is, don't keep banging your head against a piece, step back analyse what's wrong, go away and get good at that thing and then go back to your painting /drawing a apply your new techniques, it's a great feeling! Till next time. 

All About That Line Art

Been beavering away on a high quality piece these past few days, the early stages have taken me a bit longer than I would like but this was mainly due to destiny (that game is slowly sucking my life away!). The line art for the piece is pretty much done though, only a few things to finish up. The picture on the right is my initial sketch phase, where I just play around with the characters design, the left piece is when I take all those ideas and tighten them up into the final line art pass, I love photoshop when it comes to easily editing and reiterating on pictures like this!

Her horns haven't been sketched in yet and I'm thinking of not including them at all due to some feedback on twitter, someone mentioned it looked like smoke, so I'm thinking of playing around with that idea. Should have the whole piece finished by the end of the week but first I am going to do a few colour tests using a technique I learned from a sellfy video I picked up, hopefully it will speed up my colouring process a lot as that's probably one of my weakest areas at the moment (as you've all probably noticed with all the black and white paintings). Till next time. 

Evolution

My bad it's been a whole week since I updated, slacking in the blogging department! There is a reason though, been busy designing elves, lots and lots of elves. So where to start eh?? Well the elves without the orange backgrounds are where my initial idea generation took me, I was worrying a lot about making my elves look like.....well.....elves and I was producing a lot of generic designs. So I lowered the opacity and did another pass, always trying to think outside the box and the orange backed ones are a result of that. Finally begining to get that "animal" look that I've been chasing, lots of talismans and a cobbled together look is helping with this. The creepy masks are just an experiment, do you think I should keep them?? Till next time. 

Experimenting

So I took my line art from yesterday and fleshed it out a little bit. I was playing around with not concentrating on rendering the painting to the nth degree and leaving some areas looking vague or barely painted at all. it definitely sped up my painting speed as I managed to get this done in about three to four hours, which is roughly how long it took me to just do the line art on the priest concept! Going to play around with this style a little more in the future! The character herself is going to be some sort of huntress or clan leader for my elf race, plenty more back story to flesh out though. Till next time. 

Creating The Elves

So I'm taking a break from designing the "nordic" race to begin on the elves, my initial approach was to make them very acrobatic and graceful but I felt this was a bit stereotypical, which is something I am trying to stay away from in my IP. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with the second design, with this one I am trying to make them look more aggressive and very animistic, which I think the second design is getting across (though not enough), also trying to incorporate a few design elements from the "nords" to give the world a sense of continuity, going to carry on working on the elves tomorrow though, stay stay tuned for more, early days yet.

This next piece is me exploring how the elves would live, I want their homes to look very organic, as much a part of the forest as the trees are. This first idea is almost like a bee hive, with all these spherical buildings clumped together on the tree's forming one mass, still more work to do on that too. Till next time! 

Slowly Building A World

Some new bits of work today to show everyone! The top piece is me continuing to explore ideas for my "nord" race, I'm trying to avoid some of the big stereotypical Viking aesthetics, (apart from the beards that is), so that my world looks really unique. I am trying to expand on the priest character that I designed the other day into all aspects of the "nord" look, in my head I have their culture as very religious, going as far to say that they are fanatics. So I am using lots of symbols and markings combined with helmets that are more ritual in nature than military. Still plenty of work to do on them.

The second picture is me exploring a new race in my IP, the elves in my world again are not going to be your traditional elves. These crystal forests are going to be where the elves are born, almost like genetically grown but more "magical". The overall design of the elves will be very animalistic and ferocious but I will explore more of that in their character designs. Hope you enjoy my design thoughts and its not just boring text to read. Till next time.