Soooo... I'm jumping in a bit late. All I've got to show is an idea and some research/moodboarding. Hopefully something will develop from it :)
My last mood board is mostly saber-toothed cats, because...yeah, I love 'em. But depending which way the illustration goes, I may not be using that concept... what do you guys think?
I misspelled 'saber-toothed cat' as 'saber tooth cat' all though the ideas thing, though, so apparently I don't love them that much, haha :)
Worked on my spider woman this evening by trying out some silhouettes (working out the proportion of human to spider that I'll go for). Followed up with some quick values on top of my favourite silhouettes to develop them a bit further.
This afternoon's work was some development on the scarecrow saber-tooth idea. Gathered reference of corn dollies, and used that as a basis for how straw can be shaped, and sketched up these kitties.
Cool stuff man, especially the design process for the creature. Keep it up...just one note on the humanoid, it needs to be, well, humanoid. In most general terms this usually means two legs, two arms, and a head.
Ah, ok. I was thinking of using a humanoid head, torso & arms, and playing with the legs a bit more. But having read what you've written I'll keep closer to the humanoid shape. Cheers :)
Damn, I don't care that much about mood boards, but the ones you've posted have some pretty amazing synergy, and making that creature out of crops works amazingly well in terms of creating mood... feels like a nature spirit or something. It still seems a little simple at this stage, but it has the potential to mesh together amazingly well if you treat some the bundles of crops like muscles, znd use them to describe the forms of your creature.
Sooo.... I've been in one of those 'I hate my art, I hate myself' kind of moods. I'm getting frustrated that I don't yet have the skills I need. Further design work on the spider was just...so difficult. None of it worked out how it was in my head.
But I've come up with this little comp and since I have so little time left, I guess this is what I'm going with!
In case my splodges don't read: spider woman top right, in top down perspective, weaving some wheat in her hands, and sabertooth lying on the ground, with a crow under its paw. Birch trees to support perspective and flying crows to support composition. Crits and suggestions welcome :)
Don't be too hard on yourself. I love the way you handled the edges in this, and dynamic perspective and the composition are also pretty good. The spider-arm next to your blue characters right leg feels like it should be behind the white tree to the middle, and maybe you could go more saturated in places, but overall you've done some really nice things with this painting.
Yes! I agree about the saturation. What I've been working with is so muddy and off.
Before doing any rendering today, I've tried out some colour variations to see what I can come up with. I'm probably using the bottom left grey/gold combo. It feels halloweeny to me, and echoes the atmosphere of some of my inspiration refs, which had gold fields and dark brooding grey skies.
I tend to change up values and colour as I render as well, so hopefully I'll end up with something passable by the end!
Still working on it. Here's where I'm at with rendering. I love how the cleavage is one of the only bits that's working so far. That probably says a lot about my priorities in life xD
Yes! That's exactly the kind of orange I was hoping for, and the way you defined the forms of the ground with brushstrokey-textures reads very, very well. If you have time you could try pushing the whites of the trees a little more, or make the sky darker and more saturated in places to create some interest and a few areas of stronger contrast in that part of the painting... and if you want to play Ruan Jia you could even mess with hue variations in your purple cloth a bit.
(10-29-2016, 05:15 AM)Lodratio Wrote: Yes! That's exactly the kind of orange I was hoping for, and the way you defined the forms of the ground with brushstrokey-textures reads very, very well. If you have time you could try pushing the whites of the trees a little more, or make the sky darker and more saturated in places to create some interest and a few areas of stronger contrast in that part of the painting... and if you want to play Ruan Jia you could even mess with hue variations in your purple cloth a bit.
Ah well, if I could just learn to paint like Ruan Jia, that would solve everything! LOVE that stuff... In fact. You've inspired me to try to take this in a slightly different direction stylistically. Thank you. :)
