CC 06: Ghost and Raven

[MetaShinryu]

A bit late to the party, hoping not TOO late...

Spent some time thinkering with ideas based on the keywords, as well as defining the look and feel i would aim at for each. Here are some sketches and ref boards that go with them:

Overall mood/colors:



Overall aesthetic i aim for:




Things i will use to amp up the creep factor(mildly disturbing so hidden):

Spoiler

Now onto the actual ideas:

Idea 01: 

Premise: The ghost of a girl who lost her sight in a cruel way, and her raven partner constantly trying to find her eyes.

Sketches:



Look/feel ref:



Idea 02:

Premise: Girl and her pet bird wake up in a macabre, warped version of reality, and have to find their way back home.

Sketches:



Look/feel ref:


Idea 03:

Premise: A guiding spirit that disguises itself as a cleric and lures souls to their destination with the help of its raven companion.

Sketches:



Look/feel ref:


Idea 04:

Premise: The ghost of a warrior chosen to drive stray souls back to the otherworld, guided by a guardian spirit that takes the form of a raven.

Sketches:



Look/feel ref:



Idea 05:

Premise: A druid given the task of banishing evil entities, channels necromantic powers through raven companion.

Sketches:



Look/feel ref:



Idea 06

Premise: The blind ghost of a serial killer, finds its victims with the aid of his pet raven. 
Story notes: Legend says seeing the glow of a white raven on a moonless night is an omen of death.

Sketches:



Look/feel ref:



I will post some studies/non-broken drawing when i decide where should i go from here :/

[Hozure]

Wow, yeah, that's a lot of ideas. Gotta say the first one with the eye searching raven appeals to me the most. Sounds like something from an actual folklore. Interested in seeing which one you go with.

[Piotr Jasielski]

That is a great idea exploration, you did a lot of research. I think most of your ideas are pretty decent, if you're set on one, it'd be best to do some studies that would help you develop a good finished painting.

Good luck!

[MetaShinryu]

Wow, yeah, that's a lot of ideas. Gotta say the first one with the eye searching raven appeals to me the most. Sounds like something from an actual folklore. Interested in seeing which one you go with.

I think im going to start with that one, the rest are all pretty much in my comfort zone, it should be interesting :)

That is a great idea exploration, you did a lot of research. I think most of your ideas are pretty decent, if you're set on one, it'd be best to do some studies that would help you develop a good finished painting.

Good luck!

Thanks man, doing just that:



Figure drawing is probably the thing i suck at the most, so im killing that first:

[Amit Dutta]

Nice process so far. Lots of ideas thought out. I won't say which is my favourite, that's your choice, but keen to see what results!

[neopatogen]

Awesome amout of ideas! And I love your sketching style. Can't wait to see how it turns out :)

[MetaShinryu]

Some more idea development stuff:

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The story of Ghost and Raven starts with the death of Angus Ravenloft, a master toy maker who lived an insular life with his wife and only daughter.



Angus, a nomad at heart, was eager to explore the world, and find himself staring in awe at the novel inventions of other master artisans across the globe.

He stayed at home for very short periods of times, in order to share his stories with his family and to work on new pieces to sell on his future expeditions.

His wife was Amanda Woolf, was a very superstitious woman with obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

She enjoyed observing her daughter Celine play with the dolls her father made for her, as well as organizing them by size, dress, haircut and eye color after she finished playing with them.

They would wait for weeks on end for his return, impatiently awaiting for the new discoveries he would make on his travels, and the new kinds of toys he would be able to make with newfound creative techniques.

One day they received a message that explained in detail how he had contracted an incurable disease in one of his expeditions, and died shortly after without even being able to return with his family.



Amanda was not able to cope with the loss, every afternoon she would stand motionless in front of her husbands portrait, crying for hours on end, and would only ever feel compelled to move when something in her environment changed, dust settling over the figures on his memorial table, her daughter going outside to play, night time falling...

When not in front of his portrait or taking care of household tasks, she would spend time in her husband's working room, looking at each and every one of the trinkets and creations spread across the multiple tables, getting short lived enjoyment from the memories they brought back, and painfully deciding which ones she was willing to sell in order to survive.

Celine however was more akin to her father, who aknowledged death as merely the return to the place where people truly belong, and much like him, she was quite fond of nature, and enjoyed the company of animals and going outside to explore her surroundings.

As time passed, she started growing weary of the heavy air the death of his father had left on their home, and went outside the home more and more often, leaving her mother with more time to herself...

In one of her little escapades she made an unlikely friend, in the outskirts of the Ravenloft manor, atop a tree visible from her room, a white raven had made a nest from pieces of cloth left behind while she played with her dolls she brought to the forest.



The bird recognized her clothing as being the same he used to build a home for his offsprings, and started following her everywhere.



All of a sudden, she had a reason to stay inside again...



She begun dusting off her father's old books about folklore and family history, and reading them aloud became a recurring activity they both seemed to enjoy; it was as if the bird could actually understand what was being read to him...



His company also rekindled her passion for drawing, an activity that started to lose appeal as her father's travels became long-winded, and the delay to show her etchings to someone who cared elongated... 

Meanwhile, her mother started behaving oddly, speaking out loud every thought that crossed her mind, getting rid of objects that belonged to her father, cursing "the day that foul bird barged in our lives"...

Unbeknownst to her daughter, these birds were regarded by her family members as guardian spirits, which symbolized their embrace of fate and death, and once met, would serve as companions to guide them to the afterlife...

In one of the few brief moments of self consciousness she still experienced, her mother began to wonder why her daughter started spending so much time inside her room, knowing she loves to go into the woods that surround their household.

For the longest time, she avoided disturbing her daughter when she actually choose to stay inside, fearing the only true company she had left would feel estranged by her intromision.

Until the fateful day when curiosity got the best of her...



Never had she felt as unnerved as when she heard the call of her mother as stairway footsteps became louder, and she recalled the funeral of his father, and the way her mother reacted to the sight of a similar bird once it sat atop the tombstone of his deceased husband. 

As her mother entered the room, the very few traces of sanity she had left completely vanished, as her eyes fixated on the sight of the painting her daughter was working on, she opened the closet doors only to find her alongside that... THING...

In a fit of uncontrollable rage she ripped appart most of her husband's books, burned all of her daughter's artwork, and robbed her of the only friend she had ever earned. 

Only a small paper sketch that fell under one of the tables remained...



Once her mother realized she realized she had escaped to give her friend a proper farwell, and returned soaked, with her hair made a mess, and her clothes ragged. the last words she uttered before locking her in her room were:

"You are just like your father, too much like him".

After this episode, a single thought invaded her mind: she would make sure her daughter would not suffer the same fate as his husband.

She began by trying to force her to dye her hair black, changing the color of her clothes, making sure there was no way for her to leave the house without her noticing, and spending every hour of the day thinking of ways to make her change.

But no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much effort she put into it, there was one thing she would never be able to change...

Or so she thought, until one day, while through her husband's remaining possessions, she stumbled upon a strange looking box, which gave her an interesting idea.



She could not afford to lose her, after all, she was all that remained, their masterpiece, their precious little doll...



After all the things that happened once this disgraceful idea came to existence, all her daughter desired was to return to the only place she'd felt as if she truly belonged.




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I was fooling around with the idea of switching around who died, and who was going nuts, the father losing his mind after his wife died, and wishing his daughter looked more like her, but i think this works better for the final image i am going for(a one-shot narrative illustration condensing all of the former images in a connect the dots fashion).

Pencil studies:








Gotta start working on comps and the final image now, deadline is almost there...

[MetaShinryu]

Some final comps:



I think i'll go with either the upper left or the lower right, seem less forced and more akin to what i had in mind from the beginning.

A quick color exploration thingy:


Don't think i will be able to pull all the baroque stuff on time, but the idea is there :P

[Artloader]

Wow dude! Lots of work here and I really love the story you've got going on with this! Good work!

[MetaShinryu]

Wow dude!  Lots of work here and I really love the story you've got going on with this!  Good work!

Thanks bro!

Here is the line drawing i will use for the final image, posting it by itself to showcase the design/composition before i start rendering on top of it.



The whole image is designed around telling the story from the previous boards:

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Humanoid design(ghost girl):
Is missing an eye, has a half-functioning white-pupil one(which falls and hangs out from time to time, often for humorous effect). 
Half a glasgow smile on the side with the semi-functioning eye.
Burn/bruise scars around the neck(from hanging herself)
Gashes/scars on forearms, thighs and stomach from being stabbed.
Gothic/victorian looking clothes, ragged from fighting over knife.
Unkempt, bloodstained, white hair with black areas around tip, from dye/removing braids after knife fight.
Translucent, moving spots around her skin, exposing bones periodically.

Creature design(dead raven):
Is missing the opposite eye of the girl, the other one is sunken/rotting.
Skull exposed over half its head.
Handsome-ass haircut that oddly resembles father figure on the photo...
Neck collaped due to mother figure snapping it.
Broken wing that somehow still allows it to fly, although clumsily.
Usually brings a freshly gouged out human eye for her friend(to make up for the last one, which has rotten by the time he finds it)
No one knows where he gets the eye from, usually delivers it on the weirdest times, often for humorous effect.

Composition/narrative:

The entry points to the image are the silhouette of the raven and the ghost face respectively, since both will have the highest amount of contrast around the eyes.

The girl has a glad expression, the book indicates she was about to start reading.

A page of the book is being slightly lifted up by the wind from the open window, which points to a crystal eye.

The crystal eye seems to be staring at either portrait behind the girl, or the girl's hand reaching for the human eye the raven is carrying.

The portrait shows a likeness of a mother figure and her daughter, as well as a portrait of presumably the father figure, with a candle over a memorial table, which contains various dolls, a raven toy, a wedding mockup made with dolls, and a wedding portrait.

The curtain over the portrait leads the view back to the raven and the eye.

The raven's feathers leads the viewer to either, a scene in the distance or a  raven-themed knife superimposed over it.

The scene in the distance depicts an improvised grave, too small to be a human's, with a small picture of a bird, as well as the silhouette of a human figure hanging near a bird's nest against the moon.

The knife is pinning a doll resembling the mother figure from the portrait to the table by the chest/neck.

The doll points to both the eye looking at the raven and a curtain which leads the eye to a picture of a bird similar to the one atop the grave.

The picture is torn in half, separating the head and body of the bird depicted (hopefully)indicating a relationship between the bird, the doll and the mother.

The pieces of paper from the portrait lead the eye to an art utensil, which also leads to a box semi-obscured by the table, as well as back to the girl.

The eye on the box is of the same color as the eye on the desk near the doll, and is staring back to the girl (again, hopefully) indicating a relationship between the doll, the mother, the art utensil and the girl.


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Thats about it, now the fun part... trying to remember how the heck to render something so complex from lineart :/

[MetaShinryu]

I grossly underestimated the amount of time it would take me to render this thing to a decent finish, in the end i decided to say fk it and just use all the tricks i know to get it to look as complete as possible in the shortest amount of time: 



It is fundamentally broken, but to be completely honest it there is no way it couldn't be given the amount of time left and my current skill level...

I will try to give the thing proper colors/textures/rendering using what little time is left, if i cant pull that off i will simply go with it as is, or try some shitty tetrachromatic version of it, more or less like this:

[milkdose]

i think the way you draw really fits well with the brief, when you added the textures I feel like you killed that flare that you showed in the initial sketches if you know what I mean. I can see that you're pushing yourself with the perspective, but I think studying some wood textures or implementing some photobashing might help the piece. I like your process and experimentation bro

[MetaShinryu]

i think the way you draw really fits well with the brief, when you added the textures I feel like you killed that flare that you showed in the initial sketches if you know what I mean. I can see that you're pushing yourself with the perspective, but I think studying some wood textures or implementing some photobashing might help the piece. I like your process and experimentation bro

Thanks man, i know what you mean, i like to draw/hand paint stuff precisely because of that, but i needed to save some time this time around.

Hopefully i got back some of it by painting over all that sterile crap at the last moment, im calling it done with this: