April Pin-up - Bancholeomon (Patreon)

Hey everyone, what's up!!

Here's our monthly pin-up!! It's a character that has appeared some times in the pools, so it's nice he's got his chance to shine (:

  It gave me the opportunity to do some experiments with lighting and background, like a daytime open sky piece, along with a more nature oriented backdrop! (I noticed I mostly do cozy/indoor lighting?)

 I gotta study some more about other types of lighting, but I'm satisfied with the background tbh!! I've always wanted to tackle the digital world, so that was a cool opportunity too.

 Let's check the process!

> Thumbnailing! I know I should do some more iterations buuuut.... Also noticed that I've trying to do the masses of the base sketch a bit more refined, because doing the structure in the next step is easier that way...

> Sketch!!! the body is set up...

> Clothes over the figure... I've been working on waist level pants for the monk over the Apparition project, so it was good practice ((:

> Working his head! I always try to give lots attention to it... I particularly had a bit of a hard time for his, lion faces are sooo tricky!!!

>With everything tied together and cleaned, I arrived at my final sketch!.... but then I noticed that bancholeomon is kinda too far right??? Wanted him to have more attention, and as I was just at the start of the piece, it was the right time to try fixing that!

> Pulled stuff to the side and completed more of his figure. Notice that I also had to move  the road sign - It's an element I reeeally wanted present in this piece, and I wanted it to show it as a whole! I also tested putting closer to his head but that occupied rest space made the picture look more busy than it should be.

> Now we got to the actual final sketch!

> Foreground lineart, without weight treatment!

> Oooonf, applied weight! It helps giving volume to your work, try it out sometime!! Also changed the position and size of the eyes.

> Middle ground! The roots were suuuuper fun, and I've never had drawn a computer chip before!! The "synthetic as natural" element of the digital world always struck me as a veeeeeery cool aesthetic choice! You see em in games like megaman and sonic as well.

> Ok for the background I only made shapeless blobs at the sketch!! Then I was naaaaah I gotta try doing it neatly as I almost never tackle it, and researched a bit before tackling it - Making a forest at a distance can be tricky!!! It's a thing I always wanted to do tho so it was funnn I'm satisfied with it

> in the far, far, far background there's infinity mountain! It's so, so, so big that even far, far alway from it, it's still very, very big! It was a nice opportunity to tackle rock formations too. You know what, I explored a lot of different textures in this picture. It was a very pleasant lineart phase!

> color sketchhhh tried to pick colors in a way that I wouldn't need to render much to communicate what I want, and focus rendering on the foreground.

> Flats! Looking cute riiiiiiiight!

> Took out the color for bancholeomon so I wouldn't have a color bias for working on his shadows.

> primary shadows!

> secondary shadows and occlusions 

>From here I did lots of experiments. Actually as I was writing this I made another one - I gotta read more about this topiccccccc

> Put a tree shadow and an eye glow..... but I thought it was too colorful at first, maybe with the first plane more dark?

> But then the contrast isn't interesting............................... I tried putting a dark blue overlay but even then, it's kinda ugg actually

> I think simpler is better in this case! That way, everything is colorful. Regarding sunny days with strong shadows, I'll start studying!!

 And that concludes our monthly pin-up post! I'll be opening the voting for the next character on the 1st, I'm looking forward to your participation on it! (((: