Crimson CHOW Challenge #53 - Multi-Legged Centaur

[darktiste]

Managed some painting on this cheeky cephalopod tonight. Looking forward to pushing this one more when time allows. 
 

The composition and the weight of the character make this really right heavy it would be interesting to see how you could try to utilize that horizontal space to counter balance the figure. 


Now a personal beef of mine with art process and that in general because i obverse it around the forum and i wanna take this post as an opportunity to speak on a topic that need more talk around town. Yes i am talking about thumbnailing.

I am not a fan of skipping thumbnail and i have a problem when i see none in the case here you already came with a something that was marinated in your brain but still no iterative process. There is so many combination possible with such a prompt it hurt to see that there was either no attempt beyond the first or that you feel those initial test are meaningless or unimportant.

Now it goes without a saying my personal approach doesn't make it right or wrong. I simply observe that this thumbnailing stage is alot more likely then not something more personal that i might have realize even if it a natural part of most process and i think it wishful thinking to believe star align every time and i am not suggesting that you work without thumbnail every single time you make something but i have to also consider that it a possibility.

I think more like a sniper that ready to miss i shot to get closer to my target the next shot that why i believe in thumbnail.

It can be a fun approach to be thumbnailling less if you would qualify yourself as the kind to enjoy improvisation certainly it pose more problem solving challenge because your stuck with the first thing that strike you and it a big balancing act because you probably will have moment where you don't like something but you will want have to make it work regardless or burn out because you decide to persist in something that may or may not work. My advise in that case is work very soft at first at least you get a lot more room to move thing around but also if you don't wanna be bother working with a ''feathery hand'' that if you work traditional you can always trace over your first draft. If you work digitally and you don't like thumbnail ... try new technique if your up for a challenge.3d is permitted (if made by you) so it even an excuse to learn new skill or speed paint or Ai prompt come to mind the idea being to have an environment where there is little to no time sink in the iterative stage.Learning skill within a challenge is adding up to the difficulty level but it certainly force you to be a better creative problem solver for sure.

Now enough with my silly personal preference.

Let talk going a bit further with how we think in term of design maybe this tips can help.

A concept that i wanna share with you is meshing concept this perfect for the prompt here.

I AM GONNA SAY THE ''DON'T'' WORD HERE DISREGARD IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Don't slap two thing together rather think of those two separate thing as one.  I know bottom and top as to be from different creature but the idea but here is the concept you take from the bottom subject and you inject 10% of the element of the top into the bottom and you add 10% of the bottom to the top.

Here an example a 8 legged women where the tentacle end in a feet covered in tattoo from head to toe. Lil spin: She a tattoo artist just because it a cool idea that she could be using her body to do her work(ink and maybe tentacle to tattoo multiple people at the same time).(Make more sense to have 8 arm in that case probably (tattoo faster) but who know maybe she the most hypnotic dancer of the 7 sea(because she as 8 feet)...Anyways the fun part is trying to justify choose and thinking outside the box.(An other fun idea would be that she as 8 wooden leg because one ain't gonna cut it.

So it a back and forth of idea where you get story telling by thinking about what kind of unfair advantage there physical apparence can help them better fit into a society or maybe to the contrary that make them at odd with society.

For example a minotaur would could do part time as a beast of burden and he work as a body guard for the dairy syndicate at mooh mooh ville. See i try being silly with the idea because that just a bit of my personality but the idea being you just take thing that don't necessarily seem to wanna work together and you come up with anything pretty much that fit within the limit even if sometime the prompt is more tricky with experience you can still get pretty creative as long as you know how to bend the prompt to fit the universe it associate with.