I'm now living in Brazil and been struck by this story of a thriving kingdom built in the forest by escaped slaves in order to survive their Portuguese oppressors.
This kingdom sheltered nearly 20.000 souls for 90 years.
Jan 17, '21
Mar 28, '21
Here are wikipedia articles with details of this captivating story.
I initially learned about it in the documentary "Guerras do Brazil" that depicts the largest wars that have occurred in this country, while underlining that there is still in a way different types of social and racial wars occurring in the country, as if, sadly, Brazil, despite all the beauty, was stuck in cycles of violence since it's inception.
I usually start with 15% opacity silhouette sketches with a hard brush, to get a precise idea of the end result without the ability to focus on details:
This allows to focus solely on details in a second pass, where I add a layer effect with a random color in lighten on each layer, to draw in black on each while still having no effect on other layers, to draw and erase clothing without touching the skin ect...:
Then I can Judge where each sketch is going by contrasting everything:
Some ideas I had while detailing were to make him look pretty sylvan, like merged with the forest, and showing off the suffering slaves have been thought, from lashing scars to chain marks on the joints.
Let's see where that leads, I probably need to push the stylization and props ideas.
Just quickly refining a bit one idea for the final illustration, that could depict Zumbi's last stand, apparently he took refuge in a hidden cave behind a waterfall with the few remaining people from Palmares, while his best friend was captured, tortured, and forced to lead the portugese soldiers to the last refuge of the king.
Sounds absolutely like a made up story but that's pretty much how historians describe the event.
Some more references from a 1985 film, "Quilombo" that tells his story:
Just to show some fails in the process, I felt like wasting time on this first skecth, as trying to think about anatomy, stylisation, posing, and perspective all at once wasn't super efficient, so I had a look at Daz taht's actually free and way easier to use than character creator I felt, and very easy to pose once in Blender with the space mouse.
That allowed me to remove the perspective from the equation, so I could focus a bit more on design, still with this technique of having one layer per elements (skin, hairs, cloth, jewlery ect.. each with a color, so it's actually faster to design and iterate on each elements independently from the others.
Now I need to start ietarting more on the design, I think the current direction is too little original, normal proportions ect.. I could test him more slender, or more bestial, he was seen as the incarnation of the African god of war, an orisha, so could go crazier.
Wow I like your concepts. Especially the "door-shield" (left) and the shoulder pads (right). 😄
Nice thanks @prinzmoana , I can try to bring them into the final illustration, I need to test a variety of ideas.
Here is a bit of design, will need to pick elements to do a polished front/back, but I might start on the final illustration first to validate the final design while testing it directly in the composition..
This rose flower, makes him somehow calm and adorable 😊
