May Pin-up - Ganondorf (Patreon)

Heya!!

 It's been a very stressful month, and I have an appointment this week where I'll finally get to know my diagnostic. I'll try making an update explaining my situation soon... Thank you so much for sticking to me during one of the most difficult times of my life.

 Things are pretty much the same, and just like when my finger went numb, I'm learning how to adapt my process to work while I'm not feeling the best. The world won't stop for me, right?

It's time for our pin-up then, everyone!

Even though Ganondorf is a full grown man, he's still pampered like a  little spoiled prince by the Gerudo!

• The initial idea was to have ganondorf flustered being in the middle of the piece, with gifts surrounding him. As I wanted to streamline more detail heavy work in the hands handling him things, I opted to choose two for a number - which are from his surrogate mothers, Kotake and Koume!;

• A more refined pass on the figure, focused on anatomy. One of the things I wanted to nail here was ganondorf's nose structure!;

• Here's one of the things that I wanted to experiment for this piece!  

  Just like 3D and photobashing, there are taboos that I want to break to polish my artistic skills! One of those things is the use of photos I take myself to use as more accurate reference.

 In this case I wanted to make more precise hands handling the objects being offered to ganondorf. I wanted to go an extra mile and use cloth peg in the tip of my fingers to mimic the Gerudo's long nails, but I decided to stop here LOL;

• After having a more clear view regarding where the hands holding objects would be, I decided to tackle the background! A nice, nighttime desert. I  admit I had fun making this background!

• Using the pictures, I lightly traced the Gerudo's hands. One of the hands is holding a gold rupee, and another is holding a creamy heart soup!

• Here's the lineart for this piece!

 Notice the closer the lines are to the foreground, the thicker the outlines are.

• Here's another thing I wanted to experiment in this piece, that I haven't done in a while!

 I put up the base colors in the color sketch as I usually do, but the next step I'm doing will be different.

• As to give the scene a more atmospheric sense, I used a technique I haven't done in a good while... it honestly shows because I think I haven't done it nicely this time! But I'll use this opportunity to talk about it.

 I applied a dark color like the sky I picked before as a multiply layer over the colors I have picked before - this makes the colors integrate more naturally in the setting you desire, in this case, nighttime.

 I also used a luminosity layer featuring a saturated orange, as if a door was being open in front of ganondorf to give him the goods. This helps setting up a homey, cozy feeling in a otherwise sober desolate night. 

The thing is though, I wasn't able to make these things more clear in the rendered final version... I do want to experiment further with this technique though.

 Here's how pro does it, it's a thing that is very present in sheets of Steven Universe for example... Notice the light dark green multiply that permeates the colors here, giving everything a more homogeneous vibe. It's quite a nice tool!! Steven universe use of this technique is pretty didactic imo, try checking out the sheets and trying to figure what color they used for the multiply, and what they wanted to communicate with it! (:

• Here's the background, with its final rendering! Cute right? I had fun as expected with this one - check out the stone formations!

 Even though the technique mentioned before wasn't a success when the topic is the figure, I honestly enjoyed how it developed in this background! Working the figure can be a bit stressing - it's the main point of the composition and I always think I have to do it perfectly!!!!!

• Here is the step where I think I messed things up regarding the mentioned technique with the figure. Base colors... I used the base colors as the "lit up" configuration I did before, and I think I have to start with a more neutral colored base, without shadow and light bias.

 I gotta be more patient! This piece was a nice exercise though. Looking forward to experiment with it a bit more

 And that concludes our monthly pin-up post. I'll be opening the voting for the next character on the 1st!