The Six Heroes - Long-term Commission
I got a very ambicious commission from a very pacient client.
My Idea was to create a piece that looked like it could be in a book cover with all the heroes interacting and showing up as much as I could.
I also could work on more time-sensitive projects and commissions while I took the time I wanted with this one and I did. I used some new rendering and lightings I didn't use before since I could just sit and think about all of the details, working back and forth with the client to make this piece my proud and joy. He asked for my moast expansive tier, the best I could do, so I went for it and this is the result an that time. It was finished at August 25 2022.
14 - I got to practice more of background painting, I experimented a lot with each step and each color and rendering, effects, light and shadow... I really had a lot of time and freedom with this piece.
13- Adding light and a bit of a continuation in contrast was nice. I kind of wanted to shrink all the characters so the background was more visible, but this is not the point. The heroes are!
12- Painting the background was way too much fun. I tried to go for a more painterly aproach while having the main subject very sharp.
11 - Adding the filters and having the lights interact with the objects was pretty fun and difficult, so I threw them in a cloudy day and had to focus on the lights they themselves were casting.
10 - As always, having a background really helps tie everything back tohether. I played with having more things on the foreground, but the idea was to show the characters, not hide them too much.
9 - Their flat colors turned out pretty clean, but I still needed to tweak some saturations around.
8 - Coloring was very hard since each character came from a different player with different tastes, but at the end I really like the result.
7 - Having them all separated by color was Very satisfying. My goal was to have them all very distinct while color-coordinating their clothes, and between themselves.
6 - I don't usually draw a lot of women, so it's extra-hard for me to show their likeness with armour and still look like them. This one, for example, was supposed to be a really sensual confident woman, while the other one was pretty much the oposite.
5 - I always let the girls for last so I have a better idea on how everything is working before them, so when I reach them I can be a bot more confident.
4 - Then I started to clean the sketches and work more on the background.
3 - Figuring out the heights while dealing with characters more on the back and front of the scene was tricky, but having the horizon line in mind was helping.
2 - I used the information I received form the client to work on clothes and the likeness of the heroes.
1 - I started with some rough placement and went over them with the posing and an idea for the characters interactions.
These were the character references I got from each of the players.
These were the references for the guild they were from, plus their lion flag I used on their clothes.