Kraken battle

Time to work on my last picture. It’s very different to my previous drawings, although action happens on a ship again. This time Clarice has to face with a mythical sea monster. I chose ideas and scenes carefully, so each one had different character. I’m going to achieve that by applying various color palettes.  Typically, first thing to do was search for references. I found some ideas for the perspective, then looked for ideas for Kraken.

This was the picture I've used 

There are various interpretations of kraken’s appearance  and it totally up to artist which path he wants to choose.

 I didn’t like the idea of a giant squid.

Modern or mutated version also didn’t look convincing to me.

Octopus shape was the one I liked the most and that idea was applied to my kraken’s design.

 With an experience from previous drawings, I set atmosphere of the scene at the very beginning. Again, my point was to make scene dramatic and I needed proper light for that. I decided to make a sea storm, with huge waves and dark, clouded sky. I needed some good references for establishing color board.

Research of waves

Colors for the clouds

Work in Progress

Base colors for setting up the atmosphere. The whole thing is going to be pretty dark so I had to make an outline more visible. Strong red looked quite effective. I had some problems with finding a brush that would be good for painting clouds. I solved this issue with creating my own brush.

Adding boards on a deck and playing with brushes imitating waves. For this image I’m going to try different technique of painting and use many brushes for creating textures.

Establishing source of light. In this picture, light comes from gun’s blast and reveals more details of Clarice and Kraken.

Painting Clarice’s face. At this stage she looks more like medusa than human but it’s still work in progress and many features don’t look the way they should.

I wanted to keep very high contrast between lit and shaded part of the face but it didn’t actually look good. Now, Clarice transformed from medusa to zombie.  I did change that problem but after another few slides.

I detailed hair and started working on kraken’s tentacles. Here I was considering kraken’s skin to be slick and wet. It was my point to make suckers contrasting to the rest of tentacle, that’s why another color was added. Here I was playing with brushes to try out different effects.

I changed my mind regarding tentacles. They looked too smooth and I wanted to try making the skin scabrous. Another layers of textures appeared, then I decided to add some growth on the surface which will look like caterpillar’s sections, but harder. I also changed position of the light so it would emphasize the shape of tentacles.

 I finally changed color of Clarice’s face. I was worrying that by adding skin tones into shaded part of face, it will loose the good contrast. It’s not that bad now, but definitely looks better than zombie’s skin.

 I worked on shaded part of the hair, since I tried to get rid of witchy look. It has normal features now and the situation was taken under control. I also started working on clothes and added gun in Clarice’s  hand. I created a design for this weapon and left it to do in some spare time. It could be my mini project.

 I received some feedback regarding my character’s face. The only clue I got was that “something is wrong” and I had to figure out what would change audience’s impression. I kept staring at her face and finally found the issue. I’ve noticed that her mouth are slightly too wide and open in a slightly wrong angle.

I made some changes that turned out to be too extreme. Now Clarice’s impression is unclear and looks rather fake. But that proved right to my suggestion about problem with mouth.

I moved back to first version of mouth and this time applied more delicate changes. I think that made it and Clarice’s face doesn’t look creepy any more.

 Finished character’s outfit. I didn’t like smoothness of the pants. They had more texture on the surface but it was gone when I started darkening some bits. I will try to add more details later. There is also small improvement in kraken’s tentacles. I felt like they were slightly out of focus, because of unclear edges. I didn’t want to make them precise because then they will look like cut out. Instead of painting strong edges, I added some darker marks all along the surface. Now it looks slightly sharper.

 Here I finally added kraken’s head. I tried to make growths around his eyes to look harder than the rest of the head. I like the final effect of uneven skin, the same one that octopus has. It seems to be all dotted and slightly transparent. I also added some marks that imitate wet skin. I think it worked and I’m planning to use the same method on Clarice.

Final drawing. I added more details to the background and figured out the method of making assets look more detailed. I was looking at references and tried technique that was used in creating concept art for The Witcher. It’s all about adding sharp lines at the end of drawing. Then, without much effort, we get much sharper view of the object. I’ve used this method for deck’s boards. There is a nice comparison to this final image and the previous one. I also decided to add more light on deck’s floor, for it was too dark to me. I decided to use pistol’s glow and extend it slightly on a floor. I think It looks better now. Another thing I did was playing with waves. Now it’s clear that the scene is taking place on the ship, on sea’s surface, not underwater. I also like water splashes, they spread all over the image and now, my character looks a bit soaked. That was the point.

Although, I see progress in my skills, there is still a lot to be fixed. The mast is too big and require scaling. I may also add dome tiny details on it’s metal part, like riveting for example.

Conclusion

Working on this image helped me to learn some new skills and to make some observations.

First of all, I figured out that there should be more light sources than only one. This theory was confirmed when I looked closely at some concept art examples. Usually there are halos from two different sides. I finally had a chance to try new technique, which required using texture brushes. I was using a reference for this style and it really helped me out. I also think, my final outcome isn’t actually that bad. Those brushes help to add texture into the image, which you can mostly see on kraken’s body and on waves. I’ve also learnt that use of strong contrast requires much more effort and sometimes, choosing colors doesn’t always work. I had a chance to notice that while painting Clarice’s face in blue.  My another observation are problems with sketches drawn in hand. When I look at the final image, I feel that Clarice is rather large and fills the whole scene. I was looking at digital art and usually characters don’t stay in the middle of attention. This method is more typical for comics where character plays major role. I have a solution for that and I think I should try sketching inside the software, not in hand. My only concern is my tablet, which doesn’t allow me the same control I have while drawing in hand. That’s the reason why all my sketches were previously done in hand. I’ve got a suggestion, what would actually help me. I can try drawing in smaller sizes first. That might help with better control over tablet. 

Something more. Here are the results of me playing a little with colors and styles. This one was inspired by Sin-City style.

Improved final picture

Here is the final pictures with all points picked up to change. I've got a feedback from my tutor, according previous version, and he suggested using more photo references. The outcome turned out to be pretty dynamic, it also made image look "sharper" and much more detailed.