ART WAR 4 | 2D | War of the Elements | Admiral Fike | threees

The Dread of Four Seas is here, those who do not acknowledge Water's supremacy shall be vanquished! ... or something
I'm an amateur artist, quite a newbie in digital art to be fair ^.^ But i'll do my best.
My ArtStation(not much there to be honest ): https://www.artstation.com/threees

Michał Kuś
kusmichal06@gmail.com

I started traditionally with pencil and paper, and made a reaaally quick sketch of the character i had in mind, so this is the starting point for my creative process. Taking this to Photoshop now and see tou around Also any feedback will be not only welcome, but probably needed, so don't be afraid to critique.

Did some thumbnails for the illustration using the character concept i sketched up before. Fike's look is going to be subject to some change but I'm going to do it while working on the illustration. Going to think on which one do i like, if someone has any feedback I'm glad to hear it :). Also merry christmas everyone

In the meantime let me elaborate a little on the backstory of my character.
Admiral Fike is the leader of Water's navy, he's the one making sure It's domain cannot be entered by those who are not privileged. He's a fearless explorer of all waters, evident by four flasks he carries at all times, each containing a sample of water from one of the Four Seas. Besides having learnt all the secrets of capitainship, he commands an unparalled talent for navigation due to his ability of communicating with Water itself, whom he treats as a dear friend. If need for a fight arises he's more than competent in battle with (his axe i guess but I'm not entirely sure yet xD). He can be easily spotted aboard any vessel by his commanding pose and a long pipe, which he smokes at all times. The pipe is supposedly a personal gift from Water to him, and some say it's the source of his supernatural powers.
So tl;dr he's a glorified pirate ARRRR

Started work on the illustration using the original pose after all, i deemed it the most fitting to the type of character out of all four thumbnails, but i also liked the steering wheel so I added that in. The colors are placeholders for now, I haven't decided on them yet.

Update on the illustration. I polished up the linework a little, started on some background, and added Water in the form of a floating girl whispering in Fike's ear to spice up the illustration. Still thinking on the colors and his outfit, if anyone has any ideas hit me up

@brandoncrampton1 Thank you! You were right of course.
I did some structural changes to the image, added some elements to the character and started thinking about the colors. I need to make him look richer, so some jewelry and expensive cloth is coming

I'm thinking about the composition and i wonder if he's "attacking or defending" enough... He's steering the ship obviously, but it's very static overall. I dread scrapping it though due to a time constraint, since i'm working on a borrowed tablet (having lost my stylus somehow, don't ask...) and it can mean i won't be able to finish. If anyone has thoughts or cool ideas lemme know

secondillustrationv1.jpg3840x2160 2.88 MB

I decided to make the radical decision and treat the previous image as let's say character development and start over . I hope I won't regret it. It's still rough around the egdes but I wanted to give an update. Also I have no idea about how ships work or look in detail so this is gonna be "fun" .

Some big scale changes happening! I decided to make it feel more like a battle of elements, i needed to make the canvas a little wider for that in order not to break the composition. Also got some feedback from a friend and change the position of the character to be more open. I think from now on it's basically rendering so we'll see how that goes.

Welcome back in 2020 I've had trouble finding time for the piece these past few days, but doing what I can when I can. Some color tweaking some rendering and wow the construction of ships is like really complex... who'd think

Oh man my studies have become really occupying recently because of the semester closing to an end, but trying to find time whenever i can. I did some composition changes (AGAIN X.X) and some work on the rendering of the character. He hopefully stands out more now .