I went over the idea for these guys in the last post so I won't delve too deep into this one. Overall I wanted these guys to look predatory, like they're roaming the streets actively searching for human opposition to their witch-masters. (I think the exact brief I gave myself was - "If you could turn a raptor-mantis into a walking torture device..."
To push the predatory look I used sources like velociraptors and praying mantis to inform the structure of the body. There are very raptor-like claws and talons in the design as well as mantis-like arms and legs. (However I made the mistake of rendering the final image in a way that doesn't show one of my favorite parts of the design very well, the mantis-inspired arms)
I'm currently waist deep in painting classes and tutorials, and decided to approach each of these renders in a different way to see what I liked best. My favorite render is the first image of this post but I just didn't render it in a way that you can see the arms as well as you can in these two versions.
(From left: Versions 1, 2, 3)
Comparing the top and final version with the first one I did (yellow background) I hit my target much better on the last time around. I got so lost in trying to render the first inquisitor that I totally lost track of what I was trying to achieve.
I'm pleased with the improvement that I saw over doing the same creature three difference times instead of trying to fix and fix and fix and fix the first one until it looked right. (a process that never works but I find myself trying to do constantly.) The second was getting there at far as atmosphere and tone goes, but the colors are muddy and confused.
It's been an interesting theme this week actually... just the idea of surrendering. I've tried to be very objective about what I'm painting and not be precious with anything. If it doesn't look good, I just start over and keep my head where it needs to be and make sure that each stroke I'm doing has a purpose, rather than just aimlessly painting and adding strokes and lines until I overwork the piece to death. I've also been learning to surrender details to shadow rather than trying to capture everything I want at one time. (I’ll share the piece where this concept really hit home sometime this next week)
I think because I come from a background of line drawing I tend to want to be precious and think about all of the little details and things that make the design work or be ”cool”, but the ironic thing is that very mindset leads to it being noisy and quite unpleasant to look at. Honestly very excited to see how this new concept of surrender and detail will apply to my sketchbook work.
Funny how this is all stuff I've learned before and thought I understood, but relearned in a way that really made sense this week.
-Cam
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