Elemental characters

So far my negotiation project is halfway done (almost) and thought of showing how I got the ideas and development. Two of the characters I'm focusing on are elemental types and talk about them in this blog.

Seriphar

1. I gave it a water coloured base to try some experiment on colours. Wanting to give it a fiery colour scheme with bright orange and yellow. It was a little tricky of which order to go with, like starting from red to yellow as I had once normally expected from watching some shows but looking at the Sun's core as it is very bright and goes red/orange as the heat cools from the distance.

2. Scanned it in and tried another idea of blending the digital paints with the water colours. Removing all pencil lining to give it a real look of a blazing feel. Making sure that the yellow areas were bright and the orange would be on the 'edges' and by the wings as they make a fold. 

Decided to do some work on the body, build up layers of fire as they usually go upwards. Giving it more fire on the back so it would not just be on the back of it's head. What was difficult was to make sure not to overlap some of the colours as the red has to be small and thin on the wings while the yellow gives more light.

Used the smudge tool to give the wings more flow and spread some of them around like actual fire.

3. Now to give it a glowing effect, I turned the background dark to make sure I know what I'm doing so that the firebird won't be too bright or rough glow, I took the orange to match with the outer flames. Setting them to the proper.

4. As it is finished I added some minor touches to the flames, give them more brightness and glow so that it stands out more in the dark. Now a fiery phoenix born from the flames and spread it's flames by flapping it's wings.

Atta

1. Using the sketch to start with before doing the digital painting doing a little more on the body so that the scans would not miss anything on the body and the mountains. The one on top is one of the early sketch ideas for how it should look but wanting to go for the plain sand/rock type of giant. Wanting the mountains to be scaled down to give him an enormous size compared to them, making sure they have some roughed edges.

2. To make it's entire body into sand, they needed to have a light and soft brown texture. The last time I did it for the dune illustration was a little tricky but took some thought on how it works now and did some experimenting with the colours to find the right one. Above the picture is a row of different shades of brown for use before colouring the character. Leaving the rocks for a different layer to work on a different layer, same for the mountains.

3. Some thought of the idea of the sand swirling all around the entity like a tornado, creating a lighter tone of brown and use a thiner brush to do the trick. Giving it a touch of sand debris falling from it's body but wanting them to look faint and not too much solid to them. 

I was given some suggestions to mix it ups with the sketch s some of them would work well, so I decided to redo the lining, not too hard on the lining so that they would blend much better with the sand and rocks, they needed to be dark brown first before given some soft light on the texture, 

4. Starting with the mountains after finishing some touches on the giant, gong for a different sort of brownish colour. the hardest part of the task would be on the direction the light is at and make one side lighter, one dark for the shading from one side, but it also has to be on the giant as well to work like I did for the front neck and shoulders.

5. I decided to cut off the bottom and add more sand to cover the bottom, interact with the giant's body as if a sand storm was passing by. Finally the sky, started with a dark grey blue until it becomes lighter as it goes higher.

6. Now for the final touch, is to add clouds to give a real feel of the scenery, some of it would go over it to show such scale and size. Blending the send with the bottom of the body. Now completed as the ancient titan rises from the Earth and create new mountains, start quakes and shift the landscape however it likes.