This is seriously happening! My current fan project is a Dragon Age 2 movie poster-esque image because I want to do a lovely fan art to farewell that DA2 era for myself and welcome the new game, coming out in November. Then Bioware launches this Dragon Age Inquisitions poster contest a couple days ago, and I am so on it. So I will be deriving the DA2 image of further updates for the week while I work like mad around comics and my job to get a dang good poster idea finished in time for November third (the contest deadline).
I've dug up my favorite movie covers and posters, asked friends for theirs, and researched online for the "best" movie posters. Given that images for DAI won't be nearly as plentiful as those for DA2, I am foreseeing a bit of a snag. A lot of images reside in video teasers and trailers, and without actual internet (phone data is low) I'm afraid I won't have good references for a few days. In the meantime, I'll simply lay out color schemes, shapes, and composition. The rest will be filled in later. Because it is a contest, I will not be posting my ideations, top picks, and lineworks until the deadline has passed.
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Just a quick update! Here's the fully lined second draft of the DA2 fan art. It's getting harder to see the details very clearly with the references I have, and my internet went down halfway through doing this. I will likely stylize and embellish as I do the final lines, though I do see some problems that go beyond costuming! Anders' arm is weird. Bethany looks spacy. And I cannot get Sebastian to look like he is supposed to.... All in good time though.
As usual, been keeping up with the comic, and have laid out a document in InDesign to estimate how many pages and chapters will be included in the first Spidersilk volume, as well as trying to figure out what bonus content will be included. I found some more detailed reference pictures and though it is still somewhat difficult to see what's really going on with some of the armor, I forged ahead. It does seem to be getting that movie poster feel I was going for! Excellent.
I will fill in the details of the remaining four characters. Thankfully I have drawn Aveline before so her armor is a bit less daunting. Well, I am finally doing a big group fan art! You might've noticed I don't do fan art much, or when I do, it's in the form of design challenges, where I design alternate looks and armors for characters. What happens is that playing games spurs me into action for my own work. I play through a game one or two times before that sets in -- at first completing the game is more interesting to me. But I replay games several times, so during those replays of Dragon Age (for example) I get weirdly motivated to work on my comic. (It is also one of the three games that inspired me to work on a new fantasy comic, but that's another story.) When a game has a story that good, with characters that compelling (some that you love, some that you want to punch through a wall), it just makes me want to work really hard on my own work and hope that my readers are connecting with my story, world, and characters like I connected with Dragon Age and other games. Since that love is kind of intangible, I decided I should try and show it through fan art. I'm treating them as though they might appear in my comic. No small feat, but that's the charm of fan art! You get to see your work in another's style, and I was missing that, often trying to replicate exactly what I was seeing. Not this time. Behold! Dragon Age characters as if they were to appear in Spidersilk. Note: Below is the second sketch. I am not using default Hawke, I am using my first Hawke. Composition may change slightly yet. Some weapon placements will move. One more character will be added in the blank space in front, but I was unable to study her garment closely in the game. Next, lining! In other news, the mage hats from the previous post (a design challenge), are getting a lot of commentary and votes -- much more than round 1! It's exciting to see, and I will be working on round 3, using critique and votes, when able.
Below are the mage hats from Round 1. To refresh your memory, this is a challenge I decided on since it seems so many Dragon Age fans are unhappy with the mage hats. I have a sneaking suspicion the artists just decided to run with goofy mage hats at some point, since the ones in upcoming Inquisition are just fabulously over the top (from what I can tell). Although the hood seems to be the favored mage gear, I initially went with magic and ritualism as it has existed throughout history -- the idea that certain plants, animals, or even colors hold properties or symbolize protection, strength, etc. Here are the hats from Round 1. I asked friends, many of them artists and designers, and fans of games, to vote and comment on the hats. Non-gamers tended to favor the aesthetics of the green hat with the horns, while gamers (who already had a bias towards what mage hats "should" look like) preferred instead the purple and orange hats, often citing that they looked more like the traditional mage hat (though they did seem to like mage hat 1 a lot as well). I took the feathers from hat 2, the excess of gold adornment from all three, and the general shape of the twin gold pieces in hat 3. These were the favored elements of each hat. There are mini horns on the green hat below to honor hat 1 from round 1 since so many people had liked them (myself included)! I created three new hats, which will undergo more voting and commentary. Each hat below took 15 - 20 minutes to design and create. Personally I think these are a lot stronger, and I imagine they'll get better. I will do at least one more round after the voting. The Mage Hat challenge model is Morrigan, of the Dragon Age games.
It just occurred to me that I ought to make a male face to pop into the hats to see if it is as successful as some of these ideations. Next time I update on the Mage Hat design challenge, we'll see that as well! |
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