1870s illustration of golden eagle falconers in Kazakhstan
This week's theme and brief by previous winner, JosephCow
Crimson Character of the week #55
-=Futuristic Falconer=-
I'm going to follow Lege's lead and challenge you guys (and myself) to come up with a concept following specific guidelines. Trying to emulate a design assignment you might need to complete, while still having some fun. Here's the brief:
Traditionally, hunters in Asia and parts of Europe hunted with trained birds. Falcons, eagles, etc. This practice is ancient and comes with a lot of tradition and cultural clothing and appearance. For example, the birds may have a decorated hood. The falconer would wear gauntlets. We are looking for a falconer character that fights enemies alongside a fierce bird. It should make some kind of allusion to traditional imagery and shape language BUT here's the twist: It's in the future. Whether you want to go with retro-future sci-fi like fallout, or something like Cyberpunk is up to you. But try to transpose the ancient hunter-with-bird archetype to a new, sci-fi context. The bird would likely be robotic, mechanical, or cyborg, for example. A hunter's gloves or gauntlets might be made of a synthetic material and contain a homing device.
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.
AI may be used in the ideation process, but the final image must be 100% hand-drawn.
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.
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).
Only ONE submission per person in the finals thread.
No fanart. We want to see your original, unique interpretations!
Voting will be held for 5 days after the deadline.
In an event of a tiebreaker, a winner will be chosen through a randomized name picker.
JosephCow Congrats again on the win the Solara piece really came out great and thanks for bringing us an awesome topic here. I'm very excited to rip into this one 100
LEGEND'S SKETCHBOOK_001
To all artists struggling to create and are intimidated by A.I. (anti-imagination) "Everything has been done, but not by you"
This is a very challenging but also interesting topic.
I try to not chicken out on this one this time and submit smth for the finals.
My personal goal is to finally have a finished painted illustration.
Here are my first really rough sketches,- ideations, Im going to convert one of
them to a line art sketch and figure out the main design for the chosen weapon.
For the birb design I have to do some more researches to come up with smth cool.
Looking forward to see your work guys!
Great topic @JosephCow. And nice start @trashPanda, those silhouettes are great and quite inspiring. Looking forward to what you come up with. I’ve been down with a virus today so I got to spend some time on a few roughs. I decided I liked the cyberpunk bounty hunter for this one and tightened up the rough a bit more. I’m gonna have fun with neon this time round cuz why the hell not :)
Cheers Rotten! Hope I can maintain that movement in my final.
The only good thing and being stuck in bed with a virus is lots of free time to play with this one. Still have some tweaks to make here as I’m not super pleased with the wings at the minute and will make some changes, but it im pretty happy with the way it’s coming out and had some fun with graffiti and neon details . I’m not used to getting to use all the bright colors from a sci-fi theme for no logical reason, I could get used to it!
TrashPanda: Off to an awesome start! It could help if you numbered your silhouettes to make it easier to talk about them, but in this case #1 takes the cake for me. Looking forward to see which one you choose and your developments on your work.
LeoKi: I think you should put that idea to paper or computer screen, sounds like a great one with a lot of potential.
CBinnsIllustration: Really sorry to know you are going through it with being sick bro and I hope you feel much better soon. The upside is you have focused and put 100% into your work and shows! I could tell in your preliminaries that this was gonna go good for you. Just wow on the pre-final/ final that you have presented. Everything from the concept and character design along with the gnarly environment you dropped in looks great. Graffiti skills could use a little work, lol, but not bad at all man. I really love this illustration. Seeing this took me back to an old illustration by Brad Rigney a.k.a. CryptCrawler who used to frequent concept art, it was a piece called Hostile Takeover and he actually made a tutorial on it which was great and very unconventional working methods. Really great work though again man, and feel better soonest!
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So I'm sketching away over here trying to get something posted soon....I went through a bunch of thumbnails but really didn't care much for what I came up with although some of them definitely had potential. I actually thought something up while driving to the gym and was like I want to try this, this is what I want to do, so I'm just pushing forward plugging away on the sketch which I will hopefully have done today. For not I will post the thumbnails I had cooking up which I took very loose and open approaches to. This topic really challenged me with having not any, but too many ideas that could have good final potential.
Here's my break down on my thumbs...
1.Like the background but don't care for the character or bird.
2.I felt like this had potential but the composition is too close to CbinnsIllustration, maybe flipping the image would make this more do able.I did this before seeing CbinnsIllustration.
3.This is the one I'm more or less going with, I wanted to try for something different and dynamic.
4.Really like this one, very sweet and subtle, almost has an 80's cartoon intro vibe to it.
5.Thought the pose was interesting but really don't like the overall composition, I like to put as much emphasis on the characters as possible and I feel this just has too much background going on which is an easy trap to get caught up in.
I'm opened to comments and critiques per usual and am working up something I plan on moving forward with, but I'm still open to know which ones you may or may not like and why.
LEGEND'S SKETCHBOOK_001
To all artists struggling to create and are intimidated by A.I. (anti-imagination) "Everything has been done, but not by you"
@Lege Ha! Cheers dude for the kinds words, I am feeling much better now. And yes my Graffiti skills have always sucked LOL or... maybe i was aiming for it to look like bad graffiti...yeah lets go with that one :) i guess the reality is when ever i see graffiti in real life im always judging it and some of it is bad ass for sure and looks like it took so much thought and effort, and the other 95% looks like someone just scribbled something out in 5-10 seconds to avoid getting caught by the cops and looks trash. so its tough to emulate bad and good graffiti i suppose. But lets just say im good at bad graffiti and call it good haha.
your sketches look good so far. you are right 2 looks similar in pose to mine but thats totally ok if thats the pose you were shooting for. Great minds think alike, this isnt the first time we synced on pose. But i do like 4 and 5 the most i think. 4 has a good vibe and i can see the composition really popping with that He-Man like pose. I had initial thoughts on mine as having the falcon being a projection/ hologram emanating from her gauntlet, maybe you could take that concept and play with some cool colors to get it to really pop off the page. 5 is like you said a interesting pose. it would be nice to see where you took this also. Keep up the great work dude.
CBinnsIllustration: Really glad you're feeling better man, and the health is the wealth indeed. I was actually really impressed with the Binns graffiti that you did, simple but sweet. What usually defines good or bad graffiti is letter structure based on lots of flow, style, and flavor, along with having some legibility; usually the format is based on old content from back letter structure that was used in the subway era. Let me know if you ever want to know more about it as that is the world I have been raised up in and I will gladly get info your way to help educate. For now I'll leave you with this really great documentary to watch if you'd like to understand the overall culture more in general. I have never been a big fan of the vandalist side of the craft although that is it's true origins and I got plenty of all that in my youth, even got in some trouble with it. I personally have always gravitated towards the art form which is composed of organizing letters, characters, and backgrounds around themes and topics that lead to a never ending supply of ideas and combinations to do things making it intriguing in its own respect. I love it for sure and of all that art forms it is my favorite cause it incorporates everything, I have coined the term for it as "The Everything Art." We have cartoon styles based on the oldschool subway works, and more modern realistic isometric styles involving 3D european styles, it's really all so fun and amazing on paper, computer, canvas, or spray painting on larger surfaces. I know, have met, and painted with some of the artists from this documentary, they are the founders.
I appreciate the good words on my sketches bro, and I'm taking everything you said there into consideration. Absolutely GENIUS idea on the hologram thing, I can't believe you didn't do that man! WTF!lol. Yeah out of all of mine I really liked #4 but I'm as of right gunning it right now with a revamped version of #3. If I have time I might circle back around for #4 and the hologram idea. Thanks for the love, encouragement, and support bro, it always means a lot to me.
LEGEND'S SKETCHBOOK_001
To all artists struggling to create and are intimidated by A.I. (anti-imagination) "Everything has been done, but not by you"
JosephCow: Thank you and looking forward to seeing your update as well. Working steady here on mine where I can, been super busy with life....I'll be ready for the finals for sure.
LEGEND'S SKETCHBOOK_001
To all artists struggling to create and are intimidated by A.I. (anti-imagination) "Everything has been done, but not by you"
Paul Ganguly Welcome and great start! Your overall piece is looking good here, but seeing the character from the back like this seems incomplete for really seeing the character as much as possible. It almost feels close to being a cheap silhouette trick to do the least work possible, and avoid major areas of the character development. Changing the camera angle but keeping the same idea could work out really great and more emphasis and detail on the character. I did a quick rough sketch to visually explain what I mean better. It's far from perfect and you would have to get the perspective laid out better, but from this view we can see the character much better.
Speaking of perspective, fantastic work with yours, it looks very good and looks like you definitely your way around perspective with this 3 point demonstration. Your scene here is really immersive in it's rough detail stage.
Keep up the great work though, my critique is not to discourage you but to try and help you create a better image where possible.
LEGEND'S SKETCHBOOK_001
To all artists struggling to create and are intimidated by A.I. (anti-imagination) "Everything has been done, but not by you"
Wow @Lege I’m really digging your piece. I was hesitant with the ambitious pose you had her in but it looks great. And the hologram effect looks sweet too, I actually did a holo version of mine too after we spoke about it but I might keep it to myself now ha! Nice work!
Welcome @Paul first off I want to mention that I like your piece a lot. I do agree with Lege that for a character design challenge that having his back turned is a risky one but we don’t follow rules around here so no big deal. Your perspective is on point and the character pose weighted nicely. I like what see with the characters suit, I just want to see a bit more of him/her. :) nice work and keep up the progress!
I was a bit on a hiatus this month because I was busy with work and just anything except art.
But things are better now and I finally made the way free to have more time for art.
So with this current sketch I actual had tons of problems.
Its pretty hard to develope the actual design based from an abstract silhouette.
This comes down to my poor visual library and 3d construction.
On top of that my lack of figure drawings really made it hard to explain how the
clothings, etc. actual lay down on the body.
I kinda want to design something based on the idea of the borderlands aesthetic
where people just use old junk they find in the world to create weapons etc.
The shoulderpad is made out of the wing of a old jet. It is supposed to be some type
of "landing pier" from the hawk and additional protection because this part of the shoulder
is the most visible / vunerable during the actual usage of the bow-
I will try to push this piece as much as I can but I probably wont upload it for the finals.
Overall it was a good start to see where I have to do more studies.
"Everything has been done, but not by you" 
