Tribal Character Finish - Digital Art Practice Week 20

 This week I finalized my tribal character all though the lineart stage to the end. It was a lot of work but I am really proud with the result. I first started with making three layers of lineart, improving it each time. I copy pasted some elements that I liked into the next layers while remaking the ones that needed fixing. This ended up with a very nice lineart that I could work with.

This is the final lineart. I decided to make the backpack separate from the main base. I added all the previous design elements that I had sketched last week. 

For coloring I used a combination of photos and game screenshots. I started by blocking out the values as seen on the back view of the character. I kept everything separate and this allowed me to render the elements separately. Losing the ability to blend things together was a challenge for me as I usually utilize that in my own work.

I decided to go for a similar workflow to what we learned in 3D, by doing a base color first and adding lighting separately. This would allow me to utilize the separate layers workflow to it's fullest potential. I also added some dirt and wear as a separate layer. I avoided adding too much shading with this layer as well.

With my base color layers complete, I could proceed to adding the color layers. Doing the painting this way presented a totally different way from how I usually work and was a pleasant change of perspective to the way I paint.

I put the backpack in perspective. I added one new element that wasn't there before which is just a microwave. This simple addition would be a great help at identifying what the backpack actually was.

I put the backpack on a separate layer to preserve the non destructive workflow. I developed the lineart to finalization and then masked the thing. I would be using my own painting style here.

The finished product looked something like this. I was very pleased with the way my character turned out. 

My biggest challenge in this project was definitely my lack of character design experience as I usually work with environments and props. I also usually work with a much more loose style resembling traditional oils or gouache so this painting style was challenging. I had much less trouble compared with my orthographic scene from the first semester though, which I feel is an improvement.