You can probably already tell which faces I liked the most from these sketches.
This was when I also started brainstorming ideas about background and weapons. Trying to bring out the “Champion” in “Dark Champion”, I thought of what kind of fighter she would be. I wanted to keep her armor light and make her greatest strength be her superhuman dexterity and her supernatural shadow powers.
Out of nowhere, I decided “bandages” and I liked it. Her powers come from the bandages that have spells inscribed on them; the inscriptions are based on hieroglyphics, the coptic alphabet and other magical glyphs.
I designed some outfits based on the “black bandages” theme I liked from the last sketch.
I really liked the one on the upper right, it kind of gave her an “androgynous” look, the second one from the left was a favorite of mine. I liked the visor I did for the bottom right as well, and I tried to combine those a bit.
Some more character concepts: The bandages are special, as she is actually a shadow given physical form, even her face is just a mask for the void that is her face. The bandages allow her and her shadow constructs to survive outside of darkness and be highly resistant to light weaponry and magic.
She can summon weapons and creatures from her shadow (or any shadow that she touches) and certain inscriptions would light up when she does. It’s pretty much a spell book on her body. I also gave her a spool that would act as holster of sorts for extra bandages, which are magically drawn to the shadow figures she creates.
Did some more character sketches and played around with some poses, weapons, and scenes.
I always hated the cliché of light triumphing darkness for no other reason like “light is good” and “dark was evil”. I want it so that if my character was in an actual light vs dark war, she would be more than capable and not shrivel up due to some overwhelming power of light crap (cough, cough Kindgom Hearts cough ). After all strong light can create sharp and focused shadows.
Anyway, I decided that I wanted my warrior to be a “slayer of light”, the kind of champion that strikes fear into an army of light just from the utterance of her name and title. She’s a specialist created with the sole purpose of destroying anything on the side of light, a spirit of vengeance who counters light with her arsenal of shadows.
Here are some concepts of the final illustration (i'm sure you guys are noticing a theme with the pikes, and the piercing, and the death...). I’m still deciding which concept I should flesh out into the final illustration…
All critiques and comments would be appreciated as to which concept best conveys the things I mentioned before. Luckily, tomorrow is a holiday for me so I can put all my focus into this :D.
