Games Art - Dragon Render

From my recent work on the demon costume and studies of masks and new year dragons I decided to get a concept of the costume set up fully. I wanted to try get the face shapes sorted as it is the most fundamental area of the costume itself and generally the most detailed. I also wanted to work out what colours would be best.

Training - Face Render

Managed to get started on the hair on this one now. Not sure how its coming out at the moment. Will leave it for now and come back to it and see how to improve it as and when! Working more and more onto this painting. I think i'm beginning to get a bit more of an understanding when it comes to light and colour but no where near the level I need to be. A step at a time!

Games Art & Training - Demon Festival Costume Ideas

Just threw together some quick demon costumes trying to draw elements together from both the Chinese dragon and Tibetan mask aspects. Not entirely sure how i feel about these atm. I don't really like any of them either as a concept or in terms of the actual drawing. I will come back and try put some more ideas together if a single idea does not strike me as correct.

Training - Face Rendering

Day 8. I took the face painting from yesterday and tried to render it up a bit more. Sadly wasn't able to finish it today but I think i'll try continue this and bring it to completion. (included the original painting at the bottom for comparison purposes)

Training - Faces

Day 7. Started a bit late so didn't get to finish the painting. Will come back and keep working on rendering the face out. Will just post how it is at the moment.

Training - Desert Landscape

Day 6. The broken desert. Another landscape practice working on values and the like. Got to work on detailing/rendering more.

Training - Landscape Thumbnails

Day 5. Some thumbnail landscape practice, playing around with colours mainly. Shapes need some refinement.

Game Art & Training - Tibetan Masks

Day 4. Further development directed at at uni project. Some Tibetan mask studies. Further study will most likely be required before I can merge the masks onto the Chinese new year dragons.

Game Art & Training - Chinese Dragon

Todays training was a study on Chinese dragon costumes used in festivals. I wanted to get a feel for the way the faces flow and how the puppeteers might stand. The next study will take into account different masks and the like which I can then apply to a drawing using the things learnt from todays study to create a demon-god festival icon which works similarly to the Chinese new year dragon.

Training - Face study

Another face study today! I chose a much harder pose, one that I normally would shy away from, and also one with very interesting lighting. I had a lot of fun doing this one and there are points of refinement that could still be made to this study but it was interesting thinking about how little "light" areas are actually needed to brighten the lighting of the overall face.

Info
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Ref - uk.pinterest.com/pin/527906387…
Time - 1 hour

Games Art - Plaza Piece

After getting some critique for my previous city piece I decided it would be best to use that image as a learning curve and leave that as is while starting a new image. One of the issues with the original image I wanted to bear in mind was the perspective. In the previous artwork the perspective felt very forced with a very wide and dramatic angle. I decided the best way to avoid that from happening this time was to do a quick mock up 3d model in maya and then overpaint it. This method would allow me to produce rendered screens with correct perspective and would help cut down on mistakes. I have chosen to do a market scene or plaza as it were. This will act as the center anchor of the city with an element within to be made into a model sheet.

Model screenshot

Once I had the screen shot I started putting in rough colours and trying to build up a snowy city feel. I wanted to avoid photos at this point in time as I wanted to try focus on values and not get bogged down in the details of a particular area. I decided that instead of a large obelisk-esk element, in the middle of the square, that I would make a statue of one of the demon deities. As this is a demon city. This started giving me ideas for maybe developing a festival like feel. Similar to Sung  Choi's dragon festival image.

And so I started trying to add some colour in to get a more festive like feel using tent like cloth and an emphasis on the market. I then introduced some foreground elements such as the sign and the dog and tried to section the image using shadows. But it still needed more.

I added more festival elements such as the dragon and stilt walker along with some watching children to try fill up the image some more as well as removing the yellow cloth as it obstructed the image a bit too much. Furthermore I tried to fill out the background some more.

At this current stage I feel the image is a bit too cluttered with no clear focus. I think the best way to approach this is too leave this piece of a bit and get to work on the model sheet of the dragon costume for now. Then come back to this and use shadows and light to pull our elements more and try and direct the eye to the correct locations. 

Training - Pose and Face Render

Some basic practice poses and a face render all based on ref. I plan to try and do a page like this each day or every couple of days as a means to keep improvement going. However the content drawn/studied will most likely differ. In regards to today's study I was having a bit of trouble getting the face colours right specially with the shadow its interesting how colours react when placed directly near a dark shadow, the contrast meaning some hues come out really light.