Serenity

Since I opened makingofthetrain, I fell in love with that stuff about keeping track of my progress, and I kind of miss the whole blogging thing so I guess I will continue that trend on this blog, this time, with all my projects and freelance work. This also came up as a result of actually acknowledging how bad, terrible, USELESS my memory is, since I've spent some days updating my website portfolio and found out I pretty much tend to forget the projects I work on, and how to solve issues that arise... so keeping a record in here will save me some time in the future. Thanks blogger!

SO!

Meet Serenity

Serenity is a character for a fantasy novel I got commissioned to paint. There are two paintings of her: a full body depiction and a chest-up. First round:

Those sketches were sent to the client for approval. He came with a couple of corrections: one, to turn her left hand a little so we can see an special ring she wears on her middle finger, and to make the scale metal coat long sleeved. Upon correction, there comes the second round:

Those sketches were approved, so I moved to the next step: simple stroke color.

Client had no corrections on this stage, so I moved to detailing:

He was happy with the final result :)

Then, came the second image which I am still working on:

Client wanted a couple of changes: first, the shade of the scales to be darker, and her hair to be more flat and less layered. I proceeded to do the fix:

Approved! Now I am in the detailing phase... and creation of the two swords that she will carry on her back. 

For these I tried a brand new approach: I am modelling them in 3D. This will help me depict the perspective accurately since I suck with non organic stuff, and will speed up the process if the client doesn't like the perspective. For some naive reason I though this also would speed up the process, which didn't happen unfortunately but I am learning a lot of cool stuff from there, like how to create your own materials in zBrush and how to apply different materials to each subtool. (Which I might recreate in a later, independent entry, due fear of them pulling the tutorials off after a while, and because I actually couldn't get things to work with the second dude's method, but I managed to solve the issue so I will make a quick fix to share mine instead :)      ). 

I will keep updating this entry with advances.

Merry weekend!

UPDATE 1:

Guoooo!!

http://vimeo.com/7063909