ART WAR 3 | 2D | Villains | Blackout | sparksofdawn

innocent 2018-12-21 08:27:16 UTC #54

If you have some spare time don't hesitate to define a tad bit more his hand sharpen and his weapon.
Architecture is indeed really time consuming, good luck with your studies and happy Christmas miracle!

anilduyalbaydir 2018-12-21 08:57:38 UTC #55

Nice one! One sugestion it might be good to work on focus point.

sparksofdawn 2018-12-22 16:36:00 UTC #56

One thing led to another and I did not work on the concept sheet:

Fixed the tones to be more cohesive and overpainted some of the smoke and a lot of the lower background, because I felt the image started getting disjointed in values. Also thightened the weapon and hands a bit more and added some more flares of color here and there.

barrysaraiva17 2018-12-22 22:56:33 UTC #57

Dude that is Sick! I really like the way the cathedral in back is set up, it really gives some cool depth

tck 2018-12-22 23:27:30 UTC #58

looking great dude I'd reccomend clarify the silhouette a bit though, the arms are getting a bit lost at the moment. It's probably easiest to just do this with lasso, and take the opportunity to intoduce some varying levels of detail on the character, having alot of sutff being hidden by the mist, leaving only it's silhouette, sorta like this:

giving your character some nice clean sharp edges will help alot in making them stand out from the softer swirling background too

engineered 2018-12-23 09:11:59 UTC #59

I like the mix of fantasy and sci-fi in this one! Badass

sparksofdawn 2018-12-23 09:56:21 UTC #60

@barrysaraiva17 Thanks, man! It was pretty fun to try to balance the details and not have them detract from the focus on the character
@engineered Glad to hear that, I've always been a fan of 'arcane'-ish sci-fi!
@tck Thank you, means a lot I'm often a bit scared to not overdo the atmospheric depth and end up with too little of it The visual ref is much appreciated, things shall be tried!

sparksofdawn 2018-12-23 14:05:55 UTC #61

One atmospheric perspective increase later that will not be too noticable without putting them side by side (I'll play around with it more but this version is a possibility):

Aside from redoing the knives (man, I did not like them before XD), I added some subsurface scattering to her coat between her legs - I kinda like it, but opinions are welcome.

sparksofdawn 2018-12-26 17:12:05 UTC #62

Some Concept Sheet work-in-progress:
The pauldron and back-view are pretty much placeholders for now.
I'm not sure whether to have the sword ortho views or a side-view of her torso and head (the sword is pretty visible in the front view anyway), but I suppose it'll come down to mostly how much time I have left to work on it.

Happy Holidays, everybody! ^^

rgdraw 2018-12-26 17:34:25 UTC #63

This is gonna look badass!
Nice work!

sparksofdawn 2018-12-30 16:37:02 UTC #64

Possible final update time and almost made it for Christmas
I worked on something else a couple of days ago and when I came back to the illustration here, I realised I don't quite like some things... So after adding some more elements to the pauldron and arm, warping parts around, so on and so forth - here's finally a possible final submission (not like I'm not gonna decide to change a hue or something in a couple of days, but it's the thought that counts, right :D)
Concept sheet:

Illustration:

rgdraw 2018-12-30 18:20:08 UTC #65

Amazing work on all of this dude!

innocent 2018-12-31 13:10:50 UTC #66

Fresh! This looks edible too
Few tricks for your image,
value check: On top of your artwork, put a black layer in saturation mode (it's non detructive like a hue-saturation layer)
Colour check: Add a curve layer, double click on it, select the middle eyedropper on the left of the curve (the one saying "sample in image to set gray point"), click the grayest area of your drawing. Enjoy the magic.
Cheers and happy new year!

sparksofdawn 2018-12-31 13:33:13 UTC #67

@rgdraw Thanks, man! It was pretty fun to do
@innocent Thanks a lot, the value check I do with the black layer in color mode (I think it has the same effect). I didn't know about the curve one though, pretty awesome, thanks! I'll play with it next year (and thus the puns began :D)

aegilrod 2019-01-02 20:37:36 UTC #68

Nice work! Sharpening the main silhouette did help to make it pop.
Congrats and good luck!

rgdraw 2019-01-02 20:44:15 UTC #69

You're welcome

spxcrs16 2019-01-02 21:08:08 UTC #70

Yup, what aeguilrod said is the same thing I'd reccomend. Best of luck.

matiaskandali 2019-01-03 11:55:01 UTC #71

This looks really great.

granfaloon 2019-01-09 15:20:15 UTC #72

I really like the misty atmosphere! Good work!

sparksofdawn 2019-01-12 08:23:37 UTC #73

Ok, I updated my first post with the final images and included some more backstory (everybody likes walls of text, right guys :D)!

Some questions: (that might be moderator worthy, sorry if they've been answered elsewhere)
1) As the submit entry button doesn't work for some people, I decided to just manually update my first post, is everything fine with that?
UPDATE on 1) I tried the submit button but clicking 'next' in the cropping part doesn't work, so I guess the 2 images in the first post will have to do.

2) We don't have to put FINAL in the name of the topic like last year?

3) When I was updating the first post, I noticed it says 'uncategorized', but that's how the automated 'join contest' button (or something along those lines) made the topic in the beginning and the topic shows in the Art War 2D category, so is everything sorted correctly?

Thanks @aeguilrod @spxcrs16 @matiaskandali @granfaloon (cuz I forgot to actually say thanks before XD) and everyone before that, it means a lot and the sense of community does make the contest a true delight to be a part of (plus - awesome characters everywhere)!
Good luck, everyone and may we meet again next year ^^!