CRIMSON ARENA 1-Child of Zeus

[vansty]

^^^...What Forrest said :p

Here's my stuff. i chose to do Hermes in a book cover/poster style.
I'm focusing on the armor at the moment and thought i should post before fixing the torso...medusa's head...and....the entire lower half of the image. *sigh*

[devinn]

Hey guys, my god is Kairos, the God of Opportunity (: I'll post my studies and stuff tomorrow because my phone is dead and I need to take pictures of a sketch; I want to post all of my studies, thumbs and sketches together in one post, keep everything somewhat organized. But for now, here is a WIP of Kairos (the lock of hair is a placeholder) and a brief description found online:

"Caerus (KY-russ) or Kairos was the spirit (daimon) of opportunity, the youngest divine son of Zeus. He was depicted as a youth with a long lock of hair hanging down from his forehead, which indicated that Opportunity could only be grasped as he approached. He was bald in back, so you couldn’t catch him as he was leaving. Even Zeus couldn’t catch him the moment after he flew by, because opportunity, like love (Eros), is stronger than even the top god."

[Trevor S.]

Nice work and progress everyone, I feel like the Daggers are back in full swing again!! Here are some updates that I have on my stuff, still might tweak the designs, i think he needs some cloth and I still have the whole BG almost to do as well as the other characters.
The story now is, Forrest made me remember that we need a back story, too often I just go in to these things with just designing a cool character without a relevant back story. So we have the gods home in the mountainous Olympus region where they represent the fantasy aspect while they are being attacked by another civilization from the far reaches of the galaxy! with powerful technology they pose a real threat to god like powers!
crackedskull- cool concept man, I think the size and scale will really give you a chance to push atmospheric perspective to the fullest extent!

EduardoGaray- cool character, she looks like she never gives up, I wish I had done more of a character focus on mine instead of more of a scene, might have to crop mine because I like card art and that's what I think that I'm aiming for, also lovely lines you've used.

Madzia- Love the face concepts! Also your colors are great, that's cool to choose a style and influence like rockwell!Also, really cool flask or pitcher, really ornate and cool.

Warzone- Cool character concepts!

RenatoCaria- Great thumbs, wow! I think I'm going to start giving mine more of a chance to develop like you have done. Love the designs! I like all of the ones in the middle row, almost all of them would work well. Can't wait to see your end product.

JJ Aaron- Nice god choice! Nice work on the thumbs as well. Love where your illustration is going!

Forrestimel- Nice studies man as usual! I like the character design, it has that post apocalyptic punk feel, which is always cool! Can't wait to see the finish!

PabloNotPicasso- cool character, I like the way you've stayed true to realistic Greek and roman like armor. Also, the owl is a nice touch. You're composition is nice to and now you have a chance to really do a nice environment! Can't wait to see the result!

Hypnagogic_Haze- Cool choice on the god, I love light saber swords and stuff, looks like this will be fun for you! Good luck!

Vansty- Love the textures and the armor design that you have for your illustration. Nice studies as well!

Mannyhaatz- Nice concept! cool character and perspective you've chosen! Good luck with the finish.

Bemota- Nice armor design explorations as well as the creature designs!

robertthem- an awesome shot or crop with the right perspective and lighting can make anything great! try doing some more thumbs from as many diff angles and lighting possibilities as possible. Sorry this may be a little late to use.

Darantha- Nice clothing studies and thumbs!Also, really nice rough so far, can't wait to see the finish!

futurespaceghost- cool idea, would like to see your concepts

[Madzia]

Forrestimel your piece looking great, i'm only afraid of those perspective foreshortening of arm and leg. hope you can render them believable. Colors looks really nice. It could fit into the world of Hunger Games :D

vansty you have to reverse you method of work xD draw from big shapes to small ones. You have awesome details but the character is almost flat. Change your picture to grayscale to see that armor have no dimension.

Mannyhaatz like you're playing with some crazy perspective :D hope to see more!

Trevor S. Work more on colors. They doesn't look good right now and you probably see it too. Establish first of all temperature of lights and how many of them will be affecting the scene. From outside of the room you will have lot of sky light don't forget abut it. The golden armor is shining much too strong in highlight and it should grab reflection of the environment.

OK here's my final entry. I know already how many things I could draw better or different but hardest thing of all is to decide when to finish and my decision is "right now". Thanks Forrestimel for good critique. I tried both options, more head visible and no 3th hand but it only created more problems. The pot is important cuz it's the symbol of Hebe. I wanted to make spectator be curious why so decorative pot is in hand of common waitress. I could work on the picture next month but I think, I learned what I supposed to learn and it's time to move on to the next piece and stop whining over this one xD I'm happy that I did come out of safe box, tried nonstandard composition and worked with more desaturated colors (i still hate grays! i'm going back to pure pigments!xD) And (I hope) it show character with emotions and some interesting story.
The most important lesson for me - You can't go crazy with composition or value - they have to be precise and logic. But colors are a scene to express yourself. That's why they are so hard to explain, because choices are based on intimidate, personal preferences. There's is no bad-looking-color They are only wrong cool-warm relations.

[vansty]

Thanks for the comment Madzia. Its kinda awkward but i do my details before my values/forms because its easier that way. but you're right i'll work on that.

Anyways i'm almost done so i'll let this settle for a day so i can see those glareing mistakes :)

[PabloNotPicasso]

WIP it, WIP it good. In-progress shot of the final image. I'd say the background is mostly done, so feedback on that would be much appreciated. Right now the front figures are a mushy mess of textures and colors, and will look less wonky in the final image, though I'll keep them overall warm in hue.

Thanks forrestimel for the feedback on the values, your suggestions definitely help the image read more clearly.

Trevor S- Looking good man! My suggestion would be to add different temperatures to your shadows and to avoid using a darker hue of the local color for the shadow. Color theory is a big, big can of worms though, and I think your image could be solid without worrying about it too much, but its something to consider for the future. Good composition and designs, shows you've done some nice ideation there.

Madzia- Overall it's looking good, but damn I'm a sucker for a well painted hand and the one holding the pot is spot on. Also really liked your colors, composition, and basically I have a whole list of things I dig about the painting. Excellent piece :D

Vansty- Digging the classy movie poster look. The hand holding the sword reads a bit off to me, the perspective on the sword doesn't seem to be the same as the hand. To solve this, you could either change the hand or the sword, go for the one you know you could rework in the less time. Great job on the armor design, evokes Greek armor without being too by-the-book.

Good luck, go make some badass art!

[Amit Dutta]

It has been fun stalking this thread. Some feedback for a few of you.

@Madzia, you really nailed the colours and feel of a 50s diner and ad poster. I love how you have painted everything, as well as the pallette and I think your concept would fit nicely with a Douglas Adams or (if a bit darker) Gaiman adaptation of Hebe as a character...so kudos on thinking outside the square! My crit is more on the fleshing out of the design and concept. There is almost nothing to suggest the divine link, and I think this is where your piece fails in nailing the brief. If there was something special to the hand, the coffee, her pendant, basically anything that linked to and implied the otherworld it would shoot this piece into folio territory. Right now it is an extremely well painted illustration of a 50s diner waitress.

@Pablo, I like the beautiful colour variation you are building into the work. To be honest I think you lost some of the power of the figure and owl by extending the canvas. This is why thumns are so important...the moment you diverge, you have to constantly evaluate the direction you are going as opposed to just rendering up. I also think the owl looks a lot smaller than in your thumbs. I would suggest to lighten its value and scale up to separate in distance and scale from Athena more. Also be sure to determine your light sources from now on. It's a little undetermined atm. The bg is ok, maybe think about consolidating some of the cloud shapes to create a bit less "noise" and density to the bg so the focus is up front where it should be.

@Vansty. Couple of points. I think you jumped to details way too early. It shows in the stiffness of your character and the flatness and collage-y aspect of your forms. I highly recommend you approach your workflow by going from basic and simple to detailed and complex. I have only rarely seen extremely seasoned master draftsmen able to pull off detailed right from the start,( examples are Alan Lee and Kim Jung Gi) and that only comes from ridiculous amounts of practice. Your piece is sufferring from too much detail and texture density in areas that don't need it. In this case most of your attention and detail should have been on the face and maybe Medusa's head, yet you have done the opposite by focusing on rendering armour. The armour rendering as a result looks very "piecemeal" and obviously approached and rendered as individual objects...but there has to be consistency across all you rendering wrt to light and shadow or things get that collage-y look. I love the study you did of the helmet and sword, but I thunk you didnt really focus on applying these to your piece (and this is where the magic happens). Also where is his face? As the most critical focal point this needs love from the start. Hope that helps.

@Devan, i think that foreshortening on the front and rear arms is a bit over the top....almost cartoony but nice job on the figure.

Carry on everone else push it to the end!

[futurespaceghost]

@Madzia WOW! the colors and mood of this illustration is so beautiful! And i love the concept very original!

@Eduardo love the story and the composition can't wait to see the final image!

So heres what I've been working on. Super late I know I know.

some thumbnails and studies with more to come since the entries are due tonight so please excuse my huge art dump throughout the day!

In the lore of Melinoe she is sometimes described as "both black and white" so I decided to play with that a bit by centering all my designs around that concept


Then i chose my favorite 3 thumbnails and altered them a bit mixing and matching my favorite elements from other thumbnails and reference into a more fleshed out concept


Now on to the composition of the actual illustration.


You can see that the design of the goddess has changed again. I can never make up my mind :P


and heres two studies i did just to warm up before i start on the final illustration





Everybody here seems to really be giving it their all. Its so inspiring! I can't wait to see everybody's finals!

[crackedskull]

Thanks for the crits people. Tried to apply them and Im now finished with the piece.

[Itze]

So here is mine, It's most likely the final, since I have no time to work on it tommorow, but maybe Ill have a couple of minutes here and there.

I chose Enyo, the Goddes of War.

[futurespaceghost]

Heres my final Melinoe bringer of nightmares and madness:

[Trevor S.]

Love the finals Itze, Spaceghost and Crackedskull!! I just wanted to post a wip, there were concerns with the color palette and I should have implied some things that I had yet to get to. I planned on there being strong light from fires that I still have yet to fully put in as well as the blue white moonlight, I'm getting there!!! Thanks for the critique though guys : )
Now you can see more of the scene I had in mind but I still have a ways to go to intergrate everything.

[Darantha]

Soooo many great and gorgeous things in here!


Here's where I'm at with my entry. Hope I manage to finish it.




Did some quick wing studies too.

[goodsir]

Last thing i'm doing before i collapse to sleep is posting my pre-final pic (steampunk Perseus fighting steampunk sea monster, just need to render the materials properly).
So many awesome and inspiring works in this thread, gonna comment on all of them tomorrow :3

[EduardoGaray]

This was fun as hell guys! :D you definitely can count with me for the next!

futurespaceghost: thanks mate, about yours, i gotta love the bodyhorror dude! i dig that design.

Trevor S: hey man, indeed, i though that for card art it was probably better to focus on the character rather than on creating a greater scene. Still, i like your idea, it has a cool Warhammer 40k vibe, and i still think its an appropiate idea for a card, specially in games like magic with lots of different types of cards, like spells, enchantments, etc...

Itze: cool to see another Enyo here xD good job!

crackedskull: cool to see how the whole thing progressed through the challenge. :) the composition on the final is way better than the first you posted.

vansty: I was going to say something, but monkeybread already gave you golden advice there haha, so there not much more to say. Still, great job on rendering and texturing some areas like the armor.

Forrestimel: i took good note of your crit, you were right sir! xD And yup, Omega is the best greek letter, even if it looks like a bridle haha.



And here is my final, i kinda rushed the character, not entirely satisfied with it, but time is up.
Well, obviously the main influence here is Berserk but the suit she is wearing works more or less like the power suits of Gantz, hence all those "veins" showing in the areas were the body is making an effort.

[PabloNotPicasso]

Nice work so far for everyone that's posted! Here's my final image. Thanks to everybody who gave me feedback on the WIP shots, helped to solve a lot of issues. Cheers and good luck to everyone still wrapping up!

[PabloNotPicasso]

Heads up Itze, futurespaceghost, and darantha, you guys should post in the finals thread, this one isn't for judging. http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-4893.html

[bemota]

Here's some progress. Not sure how far I will be able to take it tomorrow, too sleepy now.


I'll post again with critiques tomorrow morning :)

[vansty]

Thanks for the crit guys. i took the illustartion to a different direction but i'll keep the crits in mind for future illustrations.

[Kaze]

Awww so much good entries! Madzia rox:D and i have a lot more to finish...