ARTWAR 2 | 2D | Molpadia | lady_lunafreya

[lady_lunafreya]

Name: Katie Parrett
Email: katieparrett1999@gmail.com

Heya, I'm Katie and I'm a student artist from England. This my first ArtWar and actually my first competition as well so it's kind of nervewracking.

I'm hoping this will be a project that is going to get me back into digital art at least a little bit, however, most will be traditional just because of convenience.

My first thoughts of a champion went immediately to the dark side, so because I draw a lot of weapons generally I thought I would start there and progress on with whatever ideas were generated.

I then got to thinking about mythology and since I adore Ancient Egypt about the Gods, and since the god Apep was literally the enemy of light it seemed to fit pretty well. My ideas then developed into a snake-human hybrid warrior, and so I came up with concepts for the head, armour, and main weapon.

I need to develop these concepts further into more solid designs but so far I'm happy with my progress.

[lady_lunafreya]

After drawing up some full concepts for my character, I'm still not too sure about the designs.

Here they are but I am definitely going to try and come up with a few more or at least change the ones I already have a little.

[lady_lunafreya]

So I've decided to keep most of my weapon designs as they are pretty much universally dark-sided, but I'm trying out completely different character designs as I just wasn't happy with the ones I had already done.
So right now I need to GRIND and get them done, I am determined! Any comments would be much appreciated.

[lady_lunafreya]

Hey!

I tried out some new concepts of some of the themes I came up with and after drawing the second had so many ideas that I decided to just go with that one straight away.

So here are the two that I have drawn up, one is a spirit with a doll mask for a face (definitely going to make this a proper character at some point!) And the other is a sort of wild child/forest character.

The one I chose to go with is the animal/forest child one, I thought it could be really fun to challenge myself by drawing something I haven't really done before and could take it in so many ways. As you can see there are a lot of notes for a possible backstory; will update when that's fleshed out!

Playing about with different colour options as well, I think I'm going to mix #1 and #3 together to get a feel for the final design but I'm definitely feeling much happier with this character.

[lady_lunafreya]

Finished the combination of both designs and I really love how it's turned out, I'm now SO EXCITED about developing them more.

So the backstory of my character:

Their name is Molpadia which means Death Song in Ancient Greek, as a 10 year old child they got lost in a forest and began to get corrupted by the evil spirits dwelling there. These spirits decided to use Molpadia as a form of personal entertainment and had them kill mercilessly. To do so they channel the evil spirits to form objects such as swords, creatures, or simply just as energy coming from their hands etc. The catch, however, is that all this power is at the cost of Molpadia's age and sanity, leaving them eternally a deranged little child.

I wanted to go with some sort of foresty look in the design of the clothes, and the cloak will have a hood and is used as camouflage (inspo taken from LOTR there).

[lady_lunafreya]

I began working on the composition of my piece today and what the background could look like. I knew I wanted it to be some sort of forest, and even though this probably isn't the style I'm going for it's given me a good idea of what it could look like and I'm so proud!

[innocent]

Congratulations on doing the whole illustration with traditional media!
If you are going for something camo related,
Your tree deserve to be more twisted like veins your character has on his face.
You can also add leaves on his cloak.
Stealthy!

[lady_lunafreya]

Thank you! I absolutely love your designs by the way!
That is a very good idea, now I'm thinking about everything becoming corrupted in the character's world.
Thank you so much for the comment.

[lady_lunafreya]

I have been working on the companion for my character and decided that they will be connected with a skull that is a part of them both, the companion is essentially a shadow and is depicted as such; meaning they have no distinguishable form etc.

So this is only a rough sketch obviously, but it's definitely the feel I want to go for and will have this being standing behind my character in the final composition (subject to change!). I don't know whether to go for a kind of protection vibe or like it's some sort of evil presence controlling the child.

[lady_lunafreya]

I've also drawn up both the front and back of my character so going to put that up now as well.