Saturday, January 21, 2017

Xana from the Wavedash Games Project


So! Once again I've like to share the progress of a piece with you guys. This one actually went through a lot of changes before getting to this final version. Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to share some time-lapsed footage of the process, but in the mean time why don't you continue reading to see some the progress on the piece.


The Sketch

So I started with a few thumbnails and then settled on this sketch. In the game Xana's character is a super star fighter and I wanted to pick a gesture and location that sort of fit that idea. She is beautiful and adored, and she knows it! She should ooze a subtle confidence.
I reference a lot of screen caps from her reveal video as well to get a good feel for her character while putting together the sketch. And blocked out a background inspired by a Hollywood red carpet event. I just stuck with black and white lines for the character and used grey tones to block out the back ground.

Color!



I went straight to color and volume. I put on flat color underneath my lines and then immediately started to shade to suggest the shape of her armor and muscles on top of my line layer..


And I end up with something like this The face is WAY off here but, hey thats okay thats why we do studies everyday! So we can fix those.

Refine the face!



I gave myself a few days break and came back  to the piece and get better reference of Xana's the face. I tried to be very intentional about getting all of the features to look like they belong together.

I tried to think up some cool glasses that kind of suited her armor but it was tough to think up a cool par that look like it'd belong on the red carpet. It was also at this time when I added the markings on her skin. Maybe I should get some cool tats like that!

Background Problems!



Since I was pretty much done with the rendering on the Xana Character I started working on the background.
I actually put quite a few hours into this but ultimately it didn't read well and looked like a tacked on after thought.the silhouettes look awful and way out of proportion with our leading lady. There is no way to grasp just hove far away these building behind us are either further complicating the proportion and sense of depth so....

Finish the piece!


 We scrap it! And try to go with something a little more character focused. Still give that red carpet feel, But we can focus on just one lovely lady.
And maybe next time we try our hand at a Wavedash character we'll put more thought into the full illustration and not just the character!
Here I do any final touch ups before we "publish" the piece. I give some depth to the Wavedash logo board behind Xana, touch up and odd shading, and with that one complete we move onto the next piece!

And that said; would you like to see me take another stronger crack at Kidd the space goat, or Ashani in her brand new power suit? Or maybe here what I have to think about Xana's design choices?.If you have any other questions of comments on this piece,  or future ones, please hit me up down below, And as always guys God bless, be safe.

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