WIP: Poacher vs. Boglin
Poacher vs. Boglin
This piece is my first formal push into making the Barrelman Chronicles a reality. Those of you who know how long I've been brewing this story must be especially pleased. I know I am!
Unlike most of my other pieces, I started this piece on a whim as a "Let's see if I can do this" kinda mentality. What happened was a truly epic battle shot between a hero and one of the villains of the story.
The Line Work
I didn't start this how I start most of my pieces which are done traditionally first. I took the training wheels off and just rode the digital bicycle for a bit. I think the results turned out surprisingly well. I was able to do some interesting things with the linework in photoshop, such as dynamic battle scars and missing appendages that can be toggled on or off in a single click so that when the time comes, I can choose the best composition.
So what I've got going on is a "Reaver" which has left his territory of the swamplands or bogs, hence the name "boglin" has been scouted out by our hero The Poacher.
A little backstory into the two goblin races. The emberflesh and the leafskins, or red or green skins to non-goblins, which on any given day can be taken as an insult given the context in which it's spoken. The reds and the greens do have a very weak armistice, in that its only there to prevent a complete all out battle from happening which no side can afford. Small flare-ups happen which is very costly mostly to the greens as the reds, in their own feeble minds, are never at fault. The greens being weaker but more intelligent usually have no problem keeping the situation under control, but resources are becoming scarce...
The Setting of Peace
I wanted to illustrate the mentality of the reds always being where they're not supposed to be and really being the cause for all the turmoil in the Barrelman Chronicles. Clearly he is from a warring tribe of boglins and definitely came armed for the occasion of battle. The Poacher, far less armored and lithe in stature, athletically with great skill is keeping the reaver tied up until he can further strategically deal with him without causing much of a fuss.
Filling in the Characters
Many people have speed painting techniques, and that's great. Whatever works, works! For me though I like to explore the depths of every fantasy piece I see. When pieces have that "blurry speed painging" feel to them, they look nice, but I can't explore them. I like being able to get up close to something and see the fine details in the armor, the little bruises and scrapes from past experiences, all of that! That's what makes fantasy art so fantastic for me is exploration. I put a lot of detail and effort into my artwork and I hope that shows to my audience.
Another portion of what makes my style the way it is, is that I don't "posterize" what is happening. What I mean is, I don't force a focal point. I like how people respond differently to pieces when they aren't forced to look at one area or another. This helps the exploration of a piece of art and further sells the whole image and the parts that make it, rather than just the message you're trying to convey with the art.
The reaver is where I started since he's red and his physique demands more attention than any other part in the piece. For each section of color such as the flesh itself, I have my photoshop sections broken down into folders for each surface type. Red Flesh is the boglins skin group, and inside that group I have 3 layers. Base for the base color, darks for shading, and lights for highlights. Each 3 layers use only 1 color and that's the same color as the base. The darks are set to multiply, and the lights are set to screen.
In some portions I need to enhance the lighting since it's an outdoor scene so there's never really any truly dark areas and there's a lot of specular highlighting happening I've created a white layer and a black layer for achieving these visually darker areas and specular occurrences. Since light bounces from surface to surface, picking up the color it bounced from, I've also created a Light Bounces layer where I sample surrounding surfaces and paint them onto the edges of their neighbors to drive home the glaring sunlight setting that is in this piece.
Stay tuned for more...
