C.H.O.W DOWN #2 - IRON SAVIOR

[Vandall]

This weeks brief by MetaShinryu - His sketchbook found !HERE!

Character of the Week #1

»IRON SAVIOR«

Mythology, Religion, Faith, all these things have been a constant of mankinds ever onward march towards the future, but now, in the future a new messiah has come, born of both belief and technology, have they come to condemn or to provide salvation with their technomagic

>> Musical Inspiration <<

Design a humanoid to encapsulate both religious and technological imagery, no limitations on technology or religion.
The best of the CHOWs will be picked by an anonymous poll in the Finals thread and the winner is given the opportunity to pick the theme of the next weeks design, as well as becoming the title banner for that week! So go hard, design something interesting and unique!

Guidelines:

• No photograph paint overs, must be 100% original work. (See next rule for exception)
  
• 3D is permitted and renders MAY be used as whole or in part of a painting, as long as YOU created the work. Pre-made and/or purchased, online, assets are forbidden.
  
• There is no restriction on the character's gender, time period or culture.
  
• Studies are recommended, but not required.
  
• There is no restriction on image formats (horizontal, vertical, square).
  
• Environment backgrounds are optional.
  
• Keep in mind you are not required to stick to what is in the passage. It is more of a guide in terms of mood.
  
  

Rules:

• You must post at least one WIP in the WIP thread to be accepted into the final poll.
  
• Please submit your choice for next weeks CHOW in a PM to me when you post your first WIP
  
• Finals must be posted in the finals thread before the deadline.
  
• At least 3/4 of the character must be visible (minimum from the knees up). No back views are allowed without a front.
  
• Only ONE character please.
  
• Only ONE submission per person in the finals thread.
  
• Sketches, WIPs, or rushed artwork will not be accepted into the poll.
  
• No fanart. We want to see your original, unique interpretations!
  

Deadline is Friday, January 20th @10pm GMT

-+|| WIP THREAD ||+-

[deusExMatteo]

I'll make a quick go at this. 

I started out with some ideas, mostly getting stuck on incarnations of Christ. I'm not religious but I think the image of the suffering of Christ is pretty striking, so I tried that out in my first two thumbnails. 



The third one, the one that I continued with, was just a bunch of random clutter and then it turned into a shape. I started thinking about some kind of iron statue that's spewing lava or molten metal which was moving away from the traditional christian religion. 

It may not be as clear as something out of the bible, but I think it gives some kind of idea of a savior. In a cold and dangerous land the IRON SAVIOR provides the tribes people with material warmth and heat and iron which they can make weapons from. 


WIP 1

[Marcus Aseth]

Hi I'm Marcus, just wanted an excuse to draw something so I took the chance to register to the forum and joining the challenge xD
Though I don't have yet the skills to portray my idea any better  (don't know if the image is understandable or only I see something in it, anyway is a robotic "priest" with an electrocuting holy lance xD)


 You better be praising the Lord when under the watch of the "Angel"... - Anonymous believer

[VoodooMama]

It's great to see the character of the week challenge back up again :D!

@DeusExMatteo, very nice shapes so far. I think it's a great idea, the iron giant providing salvation to the tribes.

@Marcus Aseth, Welcome to the forums! The image is understandable don't worry ;) , the priest and the lance. Just a small suggestion, be mindful of the light source and shadows it creates. Are you adding a lightsource from the lance?

[Marcus Aseth]

@Marcus Aseth,  Welcome to the forums! The image is understandable don't worry ;) , the priest and the lance. Just a small suggestion, be mindful of the light source and shadows it creates. Are you adding a lightsource from the lance?

Not sure, since I'm already struggling a lot to shade this shapes and materials without that light, so maybe I'll ignore it until later and then figure it out (or not add it entirely, so I can just practice on the basic shading) xD

Edit: the second one is just a little drift, having fun with colors :S

[Vandall]

Fantastic work guys, be aware the deadline has been pushed out because of heavy demand, and I want to see some awesome work because of this! Finals thread will be up soon

[Mayenla]

Something a little different:

[Marcus Aseth]

Little update on my concept :P
I think I kind of messed up with the arms orientation, can't fit 2 hands with that angle (without overlapping I mean)... xD
Oh well, my workflow is messy anyway, so that's ok I guess

[Mayenla]

Little bit more work done on it :)

[Artloader]

@Deus: Interesting backstory with the tribal element, looking forward to more dude.

@Marcus: Welcome to the forum, I'm loving the design and the backstory, keep it going :).

@Mayenla: That is indeed different, would you class that as pixel art? Looking forward to finding out more :).

[Marcus Aseth]

Little update, even though I'm really not happy with what I'm getting... reason is, I'm failing hard to convey the lenght of the wings supports and the fact that they push back into 3d space...and I think the metal plates of the wings are in the wrong perspective as well, so it doesn't help.
I need to find out and learn the right tricks to make stuff looks like it is receding back into space :\



Edit:
Another attempt on the wing, I think with this mix of gaussian blur on the end of the wing support and a gray layer on lighten to kill details on the end is the way to go to convey depth...though now I don't like this wings cause they're feeling like insect wings xD

[deusExMatteo]

Thank you for the comments and support, I really appreaciate it :) Here's the progress on the Iron Savior. 

[deusExMatteo]

Did some changes to the picture. Made the canvas bigger and moved the body of the iron savior so that it lines up with rule of 3rd points. Also using ref for snow and metal. Used lava pics for the metal which was not as helpful as acutal pictures of molten metal, which is a lot more vivid in color it appears.  

[Lodratio]

I've come up with a couple ideas as well. First has fibre hair, second one does healings with nanomachines and the third one is multidimensional so he's able to control fate using timeline manipulation or something. His legs are also an obvius knockoff of that one spiderman villain, but other than that I like the third idea the best.

[deusExMatteo]

Started rendering the iron works, adding some discret Yurts in the background. Cheers, great to see your stuff here :)

[deusExMatteo]

Adding more rendering and lighting, using some photos of molten metal and metal statues as reference.

[razvanc-r]

ok, don't dig too much in this, it's just a 10 min thing that i did while eating chips (! i know, unhealthy). i was going to do some ancient american religious symbols studies then i remembered about the pull brushes i installed in krita! amazing, in 5 min i think i already have some very cool options, let's see :)

*update*: so I decided on this handsome guy :)
*update2*: this is the direction I'm taking it in. Any comments would be much appreciated :
*update3*: and a tiny bit more

[deusExMatteo]

Rendering some more shapes to the body and getting some more lighting in there. Adding some smoke plumes going out of the Yurts.

[deusExMatteo]

ok, don't dig too much in this, it's just a 10 min thing that i did while eating chips (! i know, unhealthy). i was going to do some ancient american religious symbols studies then i remembered about the pull brushes i installed in krita! amazing, in 5 min i think i already have some very cool options, let's see :)

*update*: so I decided on this handsome guy :)
*update2*: this is the direction I'm taking it in. Any comments would be much appreciated :
*update3*: and a tiny bit more

Hey Raznac! Great to see your stuff :) 

I think it's a good design, there's not a lot of time left so it's defenitly good enough for the time aloted. It's super cool that your joining and appreaciate to see your art. 

The metal could be less noisy perhaps? It looks like it's really dented and picking up a lot of light from different places, so if this is an indication of what you're going for in the final thing perhaps it would look better if the metal was more flat and showing bigger shapes when you look at reflections and highlights? Something like this perhaps? 



Otherwise the design looks good. Perhaps there could be something interesting at the end of the stick? Like a human head (pehaps not the savior in the way that you would expect) or an old Mac computer. Whatever you want.

[razvanc-r]

hey @deusExMatteo, thenx for the comment. Actually the textured things are not meant to be metallic or anything, I just dropped in some textures to help me with the design before going into rendering. I still haven't decided what to do in those parts, just using random shapes mostly. Don't wanna go for anything extreme like skulls, he's not meant to be a bad guy :D, we'll see. Thanks!

Your design is certanly interesting, but I can't really place the material anywhere, I can't make out if it's rock or metal or shell of some sorts. It also fells kind of flat. Hope it helps :P