When I do fan art it is usually a copy of an image so that I can pick up ideas or techniques from the artist, or it is a redesign of someone's clothes or armor. That's one of the ways I got into comics in the first place -- as a child, I used to trace Betty and Veronica from Archie Comics and then redesign their outfits. Comics and fashion go way back for me!
I have only done illustrations of my own composition for other webcomic artists, though this hasn't happened very often. I want to try this again to challenge myself. I am going to work up some ideas for concept. Because my concept isn't that clear yet, I won't discuss it. I will say that it will be for Dragon Age. Last, I will share some bizarre fan art I made for a friend. We make absurd fan art for each other, and this masterpiece came to mind after reading her community challenge blog with the theme of "heroic." Things quickly got silly. I secretly blame Lord of the Rings for the strange monster. (Read her comic here, a sci-fi romance called Bio-Revelation.)
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As I said in the previous post, I like the load screens of Dragon Age II quite a bit. (I don’t know if they are different on PC; when I looked for images, I found a couple I had never seen while playing on PS3.) Here is an example of one of the load screen images. I tried to keep my illustration trial as simple as possible, allowing for the smallest amount of detail in the face and also the chainmail. The picture above has more linework, but I wanted to rely on silhouette ... or at least try it. A lot of my character illustrations are detail heavy, so it was difficult to keep it down to simple shapes to try and convey this character. I had to force myself to stay on track and just move ahead and see how it turned out; I decided if it went poorly I’d try again and allow my detail urges to be satisfied, and I would more clearly render the armor I’d drawn up in the sketches. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised with this trial. About an hour and a half, maybe two (as I was experimenting). Photoshop. When that was done I added filters. I get mine from this user on deviantart.com: Sirius-sdz
When I added the top filter I ended up with some of his hair showing a bit, just this white line around the crown of his head. I decided to either erase it or run with it; so I ran. I incorporated it into the rest of the image, fading it out near the bottom. That layer is on luminosity to help with the glow effect. It was challenging yet relaxing to work with minimal shapes and colors. I want to try images of this sort for my own comic, but that’s for future trials – a few projects came up very suddenly and I must attend to them first, while keeping my comic updated. More on these projects next time! These are a few things I'm working out. The second redesign won out but with the suggestion of changing the cloth color, so I'm trying some quick paints directly over that design.
I don't quite like where it's going but this is a good chance to experiment. I'm done with the concepts so now I'll have some fun with them and do some illustrations. I like the simple images that show up on the load screen of Dragon Age II and in the book the Seeker gives Varric, so I may try one more along that style, as well as one in my usual style (that I use for my comic). First of all, I needed a good clear image of Fenris' existing armors, and a pretty clear shot of his face. I didn't intend to go into detail but I have found catching 3D characters' likeness in 2D sketches to be a bit of a challenge. These are the reference images I used, both are game screenshots I found in a search online. To reiterate, I'm not doing this because I think his armors are terrible. I really love the aesthetic and feeling of Dragon Age and Dragon Age II, and I'm generally not so good at fan art. I probably wouldn't have thought of doing such a project if I hadn't seen someone reimagine a costume for another game character on deviantart! I love drawing armors. That seemed like the sort of fan art I could get into. I thought it'd be a neat challenge.
His face was the hardest challenge I think. I really did not want to mess him up. I tried to give myself a pep talk: "No big deal, just draw him like one of your Spidersilk characters ... dang it! Too pretty." I somehow captured his essence. It could be luck. And I drew his head last, momentarily wondering if I could get away with designing armors for him without actually drawing him.... For shame! Anyway, I wondered what armors he might choose. The first one, far left, is based roughly on existing shapes and silhouettes of his outfit. Then they just got clunkier as I went, winding up with massive black armor of doom at the far right. I like that one the best. I'll be collecting opinions on shape, silhouette, details, etc and will use them to bring one of (or a combination of) these armors into a more fully realized painted concept. Done in Photoshop, each one took 35-45 minutes. |
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