Finished the first sheet, hope this gives a bit of insight as to what he looked like before the clash! Notably, during the first fight where Idatrus had plunged his sword into Phaedrus' chest, a lot of his armour was broken and torn apart, his crest was badly damaged revealing some of his "skull" (core energy??) and he lost control of his powers. When he emerged from the volcano, he is really unstable with his powers but had learned to command lava. However after he emerged he more gained control of the lava than the fire, so in the first image there there is no lava, and he's controlling fire. In the second it's more the opposite whilst at the same time dying. His body cannot handle both the powers, and having been stabbed it meant his body is now giving way, cracking and breaking

That piece is just so awesome! It's so majestic and epic!

Awesome work and best of luck to you :smile:

Soooo AMAZING!
Congrats on your journey to finish this gigantic piece !
It's so big and yet, there's so much detail !
And the fact that you just keep going even after completing it ... You're full of energy :sweat_smile:

I guess I just found an artist to follow on Artstation and Instagram !

Your character reminded me of the passage of the Dark Soules franchise. I ran there completely naked but in a helmet with pyromancy in my left hand and a great sword in my right hand.

@rgdraw
Ahh thanks so much! And I really love this character, I'll definitely do more work with him in the future

@dreamsequenz
I hope so, that would be an incredible honour!

@controlz
To be reminded of Dark Souls? I'll take that as a compliment xD

@pylua
Ahh that means so much to me thank you!! Yes, I like to use every opportunity I can these days to produce work, and I've really come to love this character in the time I've been working on him. Same with my very first Art War submission, Adeodatus!

@cedricgo

Ahh thank you!!!

You're welcome! And I can't wait to see more of him, very interesting character!!

@juanreina654
@rgdraw

Thank you guys! I am working on other pieces of him, mostly for concept practice and experience so they'll be on my Artstation now xD idk if I'm allowed to post more in this topic now that the challenge is over, but I'll definitely be doing more on him!

You're welcome! Nice This is gonna really good practice! :smile:
I guess you can post these once the results are in, to be sure it won't interfere with the judging part

Concepts and other illustrations make no difference on the judging, I only submitted one painting for judging, anything else is just icing on the cake for my development and Phae's lol

True! I'm just curious that if posting stuff after the deadline could be considered as "cheating" somehow and would disqualify you, that's what I'm afraid of o:

No, what you post on the forum doesn't count towards the submission, the submission only is just what you.. Well, submit xD When you click that button to submit a piece for judging, it's that one and only piece that is what places you in the competition. The forum is a means of posting work, giving feedback to others and just posting about the character. And afterall, this year it's about the illustration only! I don't see how adding material after the deadline (after having submitted a final piece) would be cheating xD

It was quite the ride following you creating this, massive amounts of work went into it and it shows, magnificent piece! I really hope you win something with this, you truly deserve it. Fantastic work and hope to see more from ya!

But you know, I look through a lot of works, but yours will definitely be saved as an example of how to draw mega epic paintings! That's just a huge thank you for what you did. And even more thanks for the fact that I can see it.

Awh thank you so much!! Yes, I'm heavily inspired by the old masters, baroque and neo classical especially. They just have so much raw emotion, gesture and such overly dramatic lighting that I'm always awe inspired!

@rgdraw
I can understand where you're coming from xD But unless I am mistaken, I doubt they would disqualify me over doing extra work lmao

@captdiablo
Ahh thank you so much! I do appreciate that! If I don't get anything out of it, well I have an amazing painting, new characters and a tonne of new and updated drawings and paintings for my portfolio!

Yeah I really hope so! That would be really unfortunate o: