Final Illustrations - Industry Collaboration

 Introduction

In this blog post, I will talk about the process of creating my final illustrations for the Industry Collaboration module as well as include details about what techniques and tools I used. The software I used to create these illustrations is Clip Studio Paint Pro version 2.0.

Soviet Union Faction - Eurasian Werewolf Box Art

Soviet Union Faction - Eurasian Werewolf Box Art (WITH LOGO)

Japan Faction - Phantom Kitsune Box Art

Japan Faction - Phantom Kitsune Box Art (WITH LOGO)

Production Process - Soviet Box Art

I decided to create box art for my characters to display them in their environments at war. To begin with, I first sketched out the character with a dynamic pose. I looked up some references of wolves growling so I better understood how to draw it on my character. I do think I made the muzzle a bit small however as a whole, I think I got the facial structure accurate enough.

When it came to painting the character, I used designated fur brushes and smudge tools to accurately portray the texture. I also made sure to study digitigrade legs to ensure maximum accuracy given the pose I was using was complex. Painting the metal arms was my favourite part about this piece as I recently looked into how to paint metal. I used black and white lines before blurring them before adding some minor light blue highlights and blurring those too. However, this made it appear too shiny and I still wanted the "rusty" aspect incorporated into it, so I then used a speck brush and used gaussian blur before also painting it over a little in grey and lowering the opacity to make it appear more dull. I think I was successful with making the arm appear metallic this way. You may notice that in my original design, the arms were solid grey and this was to simplify the design as much as possible. 

Amongst all of my thumbnails, I used mountains and frosty environments because I knew this suited my character the most, given its fluffy coat. I used a collection of snow brushes to paint the mountains. The process is a little complicated but the key thing to take from this is that I used less saturated colours to emphasise that they are further away and more bold colours for closer mountains, this creates atmospheric perspective. 

Adding the extra details like the parachute crate was especially difficult as I had to emphasis perspective when drawing it. since it is high in the sky, we would be looking at the underside of it. I still am not entirely happy with the result as I think the parachute itself is viewed slightly too much on its side. If I were to redo this piece, this is the first thing I would work to change and improve. The bullets were easy to create, I first created light yellow lines before applying a motion blur to give the illusion that they're being fired. I then duplicated the layer, changed the blending mode to "Add" and applied a gaussian blur before lowering the opacity slightly and merging the two layers together. Then I duplicated that layer and transformed the other bullets, making them appear bigger or smaller. Similarly for the falling snowflakes, I used a speck brush and applied motion blur. The solider and parachute are both blurred as they are not the primary focus of the artwork. To create the fog in the background, I used a specific airbrush that altered the opacity when drawing with it.

Production Process - Japan Box Art

For this piece, I remembered to create a speedpaint as I didn't enable it for the first piece. However, the key things to note are that I found free to use brushes for leaves on the internet that I used for the background and the overhanging leaves. I struggled the most with drawing the perspective of the shoes as I didn't have a specific reference for this, but I used references of my own shoes to get the general gist of what it should look like, like the tongue of the boot wrapping around the ankle. I also used posemaniacs as a reference for the pose as well as a reference of a tank as I have no experience with drawing them. I created the fire using the snow brush pack from my other piece, which I also retrieved from the internet. There was a brush that created a fog with specks, I used this with orange and yellow and using the same technique as I used for the bullets, which is duplicating the layer, using the "add" blending mode and lowering the opacity before merging it again.

Conclusion 

To conclude this blog post, the box art pieces gave me the chance to experiment with various elements of digital painting and other aspects of my toolkit sessions, ranging from dynamic posing and perspective to texture rendering and environmental design. In the future I would like to practise object perspective with the parachute and military boots, as well as other potential objects. The Soviet Union box art helped me improve my skills in painting fur, metal, and atmospheric landscapes. To create particular effects like fire and snow, I used techniques such as motion blur, blending modes, and custom brushes.