ART WAR 4 | 2D | War of the Elements | Shock Trooper | brassmoon

I participated in the Art War last year and decided to take part again this year. I'm aiming to create a better illustration this year.

Name: Juho Kilpeläinen
Email:blm_370(at)hotmail.com
Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/jkilpelainen

Name: Elena "Spark" Yurakina
Occupation: Specialist Assault Magus.
Alliance: Volt Bloc (Armed Forces)
Powers: Electricity manipulation, Electricity channeling, spell casting, reflex and muscle response boosting.

I've been thinking about the contest for a while now. I had only vague ideas about possible character concepts and what element to choose. So I decided to think about the setting for the characters instead as a starting point.

I chose to interpret War of the Elements pretty literally. Four nations/alliances that are in a state of cold war. Border disputes, conflict over territory and resources as well as ideology are constant sources of friction. Alliances between the nations occur but these are unstable and short-lived in nature. All the nations have modern high-tech armies. Magic and element manipulation in particular is commonly used. Most militaries are composed of conventional armed forces + specialist magic wielding units. Tonally, I ended up thinking about the setting a bit like if it was for a miniature war game like Warhammer 40k or Infinity.

I wrote ideas about the nations in the form of bullet points that I could use while thumbnailing potential character concepts. The nations I thought about were the following.

Magma Union
A union of several city states united by trade and defense. Most of their territory is volcanic and mountainous, although they also have fertile plains. They focus on using magma manipulation and pyromancy. They also commonly use thermobaric and flame-based weaponry and their doctrine favours speed and aggression.

Whirpool Alliance
An alliance formed out of a multitude of islands and their settlements. There are some larger land masses, but their territory is mostly composed of small islands, reefs and atolls. The alliance consists of many disparate factions and groups that are united by many treaties and cooperation against external threats. Their navy is powerful, but their land forces are relatively small. The alliance utilizes both hydro- and cryokinesis. These are also utilized in more conventional weaponry. The alliance prefers evasion and taking full advantage of their mostly oceanic territory.

Granite Dominion
A militaristic unified state dominated by a struggle between isolationists and expansionists. Their territory is heavily mountainous, which means they have only limited farmland. They have a strong army and utilize ferro- and geokinesis as well as crystal manipulation to strengthen them even further. The Dominion prefers heavy armour and although they are not most mobile of armies they can use natural obstacles and chokepoints to great effect to mitigate this disadvantage in their home territory.

Volt Bloc
A recently formed aggressive unitary state. Currently acting highly belligerent towards their neighbors. Their territory is hot, humid and stormy and dominated by mountains, plateaus and lush jungle valleys. The Bloc uses electrokinesis and electromagnetism with their equipment focusing on supercharging these even more. Their conventional forces are relatively small but they wield a large variety of unconventional and irregular units.

Besides this I figured there would also be smaller polities, NGO's and other groups being used by the major nations or pursuing their own agendas. The major nations have only limited direct borders with each other.

After the first thumbnails I selected few concepts for further refinement. I wound up favouring water and lightning over fire and earth in these thumbnails.

Further refinement of thumbnails. By this point I chose to just focus on either water or lightning. Both had concepts I liked but I wanted to work on them in a bit more detail before choosing what to use in the final entry. For water the concepts were a hydrocutter samurai, a Cryogrenadier and a water elementalist. For lightning the chosen concepts were a electromagnetic steel ball wielder, a shockblade warrior and a lightning magus. I decided to focus more in the direction of either the shockblade warrior or lightning magus, which are on the second and third row of the lightning side on the thumbnail sheet.

Reference sheets for the character. I had done some preliminary research for references, but I wanted to wait until I had narrowed down the concept before making actual reference sheets. These are primarily to help with the textures and structure.

Submission update. I've been working on figuring out my hero since the last post and wanted to nail the character down before posting a progress update.

Face and equipment studies. I needed to work on figuring what kind of face I would like the character to have. After deciding on the type of character I experimented on various mixtures of wetsuit, raincoat and load bearing equipment. I was looking for a mixture of militaristic and casual, since the character is meant to be an irregular specialist member of Volt Bloc armed forces. I wound up using elements from both concepts I chose. I kept the equipment studies small so as to not get stuck on details.

Further studies to refine the concept. I already had a good idea for the majority of the character design but I needed to work on the character's arms, legs and backpack. For the character's face I went with one from around the middle of the lower row. It just resonated the most with me. I did some colour experiments since I wanted to have a low-key punk/goth vibe. Due to time constraints I opted to not do a full-size turnaround, but instead did a front/back pose to nail down the major details of the character design. I had been thinking about going with a yellow raincoat or at least yellow accents once I narrowed down the concept. I went with a mixture of purple hair and yellow raincoat for the majour colours of the character with the rest a mixture of bluish greys. Camo or greens would be more realistic for the colours, but that is not a major concern in this case since the brief is to design a hero. I changed the swords from longer blades to shorter machete-type blades at this point of the process.

Further studies for the blades and mook soldiers. Less detail on both since the intent is to be more generic with these. I chose the Granite Dominion as the opponent for the illustration since I envisioned them as the most conventionally militaristic of the four factions.

I did some very rough pencil compositions, but the ones on this sheet are the ones where I start on narrowing down on the composition for the final illustration. The hero is capable of channeling electricity through her blades and using electricity to quicken both her reflexes and muscles. The scene is her assaulting some unfortunate Granite Dominion soldiers.

Illustration update, with lineart I'll be using as the base for the final illustration. I feel the most comfortable when I have a nice drawing as a base.

The hero in particular has some complex foreshortening and other elements so I decided to use Art Pose Pro for pose reference. The hero might not be positioned in the most practical way, but I wanted to emphasize coolness in the illustration.