Carla Chanquia Art
I should've done this post a while ago but I have been crazy busy trying to manage the DMU Taekwondo team. There's always something that needs sorting and it is stressful. I have to admit that it does consume a good chunk of my time which it isn't great in terms of uni work. I know that as the year progresses it'll be less and less busy so I just try to stay calm and carry on.
The last week of this project was mostly dedicated on producing a final illustration of my character with commercial purposes. I had a couple of ideas in mind but this scene is the one that seemed to work best.
Making the initial compsition was easy, it was the painting part that scared me the most. I put some lighting information in the shape of arrows, hoping it will help me paint the character.
I started by applying colour straight away but I did have a black and white layer on top in order to check the painting's overall values. The worst part? Definetely the armour. It didn't look or feel metalic, it didn't look sleek and shiny and it made me very frustrated. I looked at other artist's work to figure out how they tackled this issue and tried to follow their technique. I also struggled a little bit with the background as sometimes it seemed to overpower my character. Perhaps I could've pushed the buildings further away, so that the middle ground would pop up a bit more.
This is my final piece. I am happy with it as I learned so much about digital painting. I tried new tools (such as the awesome burn tool) and new techniques. I also feel more confident painting armour even though it still needs work. The main issue it that it looks to 'paintily', in other words, it doesn't look very realistic. The feedback I got from my tutors is that if I want to push my grade into the 70s I need to make it look more realistic. They recomended using photographic textures as well as grunging up the scene. I need more material definition, and that's what I plan to do during the last week of the term (it's the only week we have time to go back to our projects and refine them).
I know I can do better! Until next time!
Carla.
