Saturday, November 19, 2011

Rydia of Mist

just finished this piece for a friend of mine's art show
Rydia of Mist from Final Fantasy IV, a long time favorite video game character been working on it for a long time because I have high expectations of the character.
I tried referencing the DS game more then the Yoshitaka Amano art because his art is very inconsistent and hard to use as reference, even if it's beautiful and inspiring.
I won't lie I redrew her about a good 20 times, so I will spare you with every iteration, but basically I had the idea she spins around and summons a mist dragon like her mother but also her first appearance when she's older.
the line art is as close as what I want but still unhappy with her breast and her head.
But still this is a new technique I want to draw, and I'm always unhappy how my line art works and more excited to paint instead. So the lines are more mostly guideline.
I had to realign her head. It's not quite perfect, in the final version I'm still not happy with it, but I still want to have the the shoulder up close to her chin.
A new color was added into the shadows, instead of blue I added a bit of orange. I was afraid it separates the head and the body very close to one another but I do think it's interesting to have different fabrics inspired by cosplayers.
Originally I wanted to have a wing exposed to cast a shadow over her, but I don't quite think it would work if the dragon's head if lean forward so much. So I pulled it back so her hand carcasses it.
Nice detail on the jewelry and splash details were added I'm still a bit not sure about it but I'm happy the overall color of it and movement. It's an interesting piece, I might come back and either redraw it or draw her again.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Blue Falcon and Dynomutt

A special Birthday gift to a friend Robert Mommaerts. Took me a while working on this
Originally I wanted to draw them on the jet, but I think you see that too often. So I went in with the running animation instead
I often like to see designs through different angles, sleeked up design
I always loved the silliness of dynomutt, so it felt in his character making silly faces. Although I still wanted a sleek design to dynomutt so I tried to make the expression very limited.
I redrew the pose over and over and over and over again. I'm never satisfied with just one design, want to see it in every angle.
You know as long as my work process goes, my pens just die by the time I get to doing the line work. So here it's not quite dead but it's close to it.
now this is a test composition using two different images. Even if I'm drawing over things with a blue pencil I often am not sure if it's correct seeing each individual object together.
I'm not happy how dynomutt head is turning out so I'd rather take in a previous drawing and clean that up instead.
Even just as a rough test, I'm curious in the middle of penciling this to just push it into the coloring process even though I'm not complete with the pencils.
And like that, just curious to see what colors are like, this is the best way to get me to push development of sketches to finished product.
A vague idea how colors look, especially how complicated it is in between the two characters
trying to see how the pipes work just going around blue falcon. it's a messy design idea but it's someone I want to see because it's the humor of the show.
Fixing up the footprints to make it easier to fallow
Playing around with colors, want to have some blending in there, it's looking nice
Drawing behind dynomutt hand and legs of blue falcon using references from a pervious drawing of blue falcon to make it easier.
Cleaning up the pipe designs, now the final version is a bit too saturated in color. I kinda regret that and might refix it, but right now it's a fun piece to work on. My art process is odd but it helps me push my work.