A full scale color picture with excessive detail and a background. I'm rarely asked to do these, as they take a very long time and cost quite a bit.
How I usually work is by showing people the stages of the drawing as i do it. This allows the client to make any kind of changes they want, before it gets to be near impossible to edit. And because I HAVE all those stages, I thought I would post them up here, and talk about the process.
Now we move on to the first attempt at him. With actual detail and more time put in. It's still rough, but much more detail is present. Plus, I changed how the right arm looked, because I didn't really like the old way. With this, his main conscern was the face and the tail. The tail was easy to change, but the face took more work.
Jimi had a very specific way he wanted Jason to look, and it was actually based off himself. So given that, I did a sketch of his face, and then tried to keep elements of it to make Jason's. He told me that no one had ever been able to get it exactly how he wanted, but that I pretty much managed to. Which sure makes a guy feel good huh?
This is the concept sketch. The drawing changed a great deal from the original plan to the final.
Originally, it was just going to be Jason (based off "Goliath" from Gargoyles) on a rock face, in a leather suit, with sword and ball of flame in his right hand, at sunset perhaps. So this gets that idea accross pretty well, and was done in about 10-15 min.
All characters copyrighted by their respected owners
Artwork is copyrighted by Nathan Horsfall
With the new face agreed on, it was time to put it back on, and bulk Jason up a bit. And fix the tail also.
Jason was meant to have a leather bodysuit on, but i always draw the characters naked first, because it helps get a sense of form. However, this is where things started to change. After he saw this sketch, he said it was
"so badass, he looks like he just got done fighting someone" so we started to change it. Now instead he would only have the leather pants, and be bare chested. The pants would be ripped too.
Added in the wings and extra detail like scars and markings, and finalized the sword based off an image he actually made himself. So if you like the sword, credit for THAT goes to him! I also included the bracer on his left hand, because that was the original plan and I thought it added more to the piece. It wasn't supposed to be there though.. But it still worked!
From here we had to decide on how he was going to lookmas far as "beat up".. and Jimi told me that he wanted him to look like he just fought my dragon character, Fox.
If you fight Fox, actually SERIOUSLY fight him, you're going to get serverely messed up. He's a lightning elemental dragon, besides other things, but he knows how to fight.
This stage of the drawing was actually really fun for me. I used all the aspects on how Fox fights. The right side of him has been burned serverely from a bolt, and the wings blown open as well as burned (possibly from fire breath), there are claw marks tearing down his chest, teeth marks on the tail, and various sword slashes around everything else. Like mentioned above, doing this kind of thing is like it's own story. I picture how all of it might have happened, in my head. Like would Jason block with his wings? where would vital areas be to hit? How would Jason HIMSELF, attack? I think about everything as I'm doing it, which makes it infinitely more enjoyable to see it all come together at the end.
Ah yes and we moved it to a castle now instead of a rock...
I ripped up the pants, which is actually something I really like doing, rips and things like that. It's fun to things about how they might rip that way. When I draw rips, or tears, or anything like it, I always try to envision in my mind how it would have happened, so it's just like a mini story.
For this, I colored the pants in a temporary grey, because the lines were getting confusing, and I wanted him to be able to see where the rips actually were.
With the black and white version approved, it's time to take this into Photoshop.
Coloring this, is actually much easier than you probably think.
First off, every single new color is it's own layer. This is done because then if I want to change something like say.. the roof, all I have to do is go to that layer, and slide the hue/sat settings to change it to anything I want. It's extremely fast and makes editing everything a million times easier.
Besides that, to get the color to go overtop the drawing, all you have to do is make the blending mode for that layer, set to something like "darken" or "multiply". Or some of the other settings, it depends on the colors used. But using blending modes, color overlays right ontop of the drawing, effortlessly and painlessly. It's a great tactic, and saves you from having to worry about "coloring between the lines" like you might with a traditional medium.
Remember that comment about the roof? Yeah, we changed it. And it took me a whole 10 seconds. Thats the power of layers. But we changed it so you could see him more, because things were just too dark. The reference pic I had was a GRAY roof, and there was so much damn gray all over the picture, I made it blue to break things up. But he actually didn't care about the reference, and just wanted it to look good, period.
Anyway, now it's shaded! Which is almost entirely burning and dodging. Another extremely simple but powerful tool, if you know what you're doing with it.
And yes, now blood, everywhere. Jason's blood is purple, and Fox's is in red. Just like everything else, I picture how the blood would have gotten there. Was it a slash, an explosion, etc. Making the blood is just as easy as everything else. Make a new layer, paint on the blood color, and use a blending mode to make the blood show up on him correctly. The best part? I can erase, add, or completely turn off any of the blood, since it's on it's own layer. And by doing that, nothing else is affected. I would paint a smiliee in blood on him if i felt like it. Have I mentioned how much I love layers yet?
And the final.
See how much it's all changed? now it's at moonlight, on a castle.. with all this extra stuff I didn't expect to do. But I'm happy to do it, it looks great. Oh and we got rid of the flame hand. It was overkill enough without it.
As a last hype for layers, wanna know how I made this all blue toned? It's simple. I made a solid blue layer over the top of everything else, and blended that ontop with a lower opacity. Colors are more blue tones and muted, at night, so that was something that HAD to be done. If it was traditional art, I would have had to know all that at the start, and choose my colors more carefully. But luckily since it was with Photoshop, I didn't have to worry at all, and could color him like he was under a lamp, with no worry about time of day. Then when I was ready to give it that final touch, it was like everything else.. Easy and painless.
