Senior Theme

So my senior project rules were to have a common theme for the four out of the seven illustrations required at the end of the semester. Unfortunately, I didn't expect this entry to be so huge so if you want a more in-depth detail of the background story and the details for this illustration, check under the cut!

Edit: for some reason, it desaturated this. I think it's the png settings. Doh.

Surprise, surprise, I decided to do something based on an old fantasy story idea I had around in my head for some time, but never gotten around to stretch it out. It's basically about two classes of magic in the tale's world that are the Primordial (more nature-based and spiritual) and the Neoteric (more intellectual like alchemy and summoning from spell books). Then there's the middle of these two extremes which are the Common or just people without magical abilities.

Eight of my characters are based on this idea where three of them are the Primordials, the other three Neoteric, and the last remaining two are the middle where they all create three separate paths, though are or will be connected due to events that will cause them to clash and to team up to defeat one, true threat. As the Primordials and the Neoterics never like each other because of different ideals and the Commons don't care for either, the story's basically about believing that one cannot exist without the other, to set aside differences, and to become more than what they had always believed to be the sum of their parts.

Now that explanation aside, here's the first of the characters in this story. The rumored "Hag" of the forest and the Knight setting aside his Neoteric pride to ask a Primordial for a cure against a king's curse to his sister prophet (another Neoteric) even with the risk that the Primordial might not care at all about the situation. (Spoilers: She does, the softie.)

Alright, so, I knew I wanted a contrast of the Primordial and the Neoteric characters, but still keep the setting or feeling of wildness to signify that the Neoteric was wholly in the Hag's territory. Thus, I showed the Hag being surrounded by wild greens while the Knight's side was sparser and with attempts of order in the crumbling of once strict, tall walls and columns. I also knew I wanted to create a light source where the Hag, in typical Primordial mannerism, was shrouded in the shadows of her mysterious and unpredictable nature while the Knight would be displayed brightly in falling sunbeams to show his straightforward/honest nature (though it could also be interpreted as a sort of stark, judging spotlight). 

As you can see, I started out having the work as one huge piece, but somehow my thumbnail that was now developing into a sketch became kind of...boring. I couldn't figure out how to make it more interesting even when I tried to break the odd stagnation with more fluid forms. Then my professor gave a good tip that separating it and making the illustration a diptych could isolate the forms to a more interesting composition. It worked.

Also, the forms were chaotic in lineart form (which I was attempted to do again like I did with the work in the previous entry) and I had to balance out what was the foreground carefully. This helped a lot in the long run as there were no lines inside the ones that separated the foregrounds to let me figure out easily otherwise.

Skipping ahead by a lot, the end product made me have mixed feelings. I felt satisfied with the lighting, though I got very frustrated at the end of it trying to make the sunbeams actually look like sunbeams consistently, but I think I forgot KISS and just spammed them instead. I also fought with the colors again as I originally wanted the right to have a more reddish tinge to make even more of a contrast with red vs green. It didn't work and I think that color confusion didn't make the Knight's side as nice as it could have been.

I also spammed a wrong texture on top that kind of smudges everything unattractively, I really shouldn't have added peepholes in the tree branches so near the split, and the perspective on the floor is a bit wonky. On the other hand of my cynicism, I actually really like how the nature came out as well as the stone wall.  Though I got sick of both and swore I would never draw another stone or leaf again (even though I did so anyway a few days later), the effort helped the chaos I was trying to convey and I'm happy with the gradation towards the background. That was hard as hell. I wish I designed the Knight's armor better, too, but I like how the Hag came out. Basically, I like the left side better.

Here's some detail shots. On other news, I was being silly and made this "diptych" unequal sizes. I don't even understand how I missed that the entire time I was working.