DEV WORK AND STUFF | Halloween Oppression (Patreon)

This was a commission of the one and only Lock Down.

Sketching

In the sketch phase I m pretty loose with my line work. In this version of Lock Down he was a foal who was Trick or Treating wearing an oversized Royal Guard armour set. I wanted to get the foal proportions right so that he looked young and not just shorter.

Babies have bigger heads, eyes. Foals have longer legs and shorter necks. 

This version he didn't look like a foal. 

The armour was also a tad awkward because it cover almost all of his body, I had to kinda cheat and scale it down a tad so Lock wasn't completely vanishing.

I blocked in the background. I wanted to show how small Lock really is so I tried to place him near things that we recognise so we can see the size difference. I chose the door way as it was something we know, offered lighting  and its something kids do on Halloween - knock on doors.

Final sketch pass. Cleaned up details to make the line art easier. Scaled Lock up a tiny bit so he'd fit better within the scene. Them fluffy ears.

Line Art

For this commission I kept Lock's line art separate from the line art of the door and steps. Easier to manage and colour.

Though the line art is overlapping the it is broken into two different layers in Photoshop.

Flat Colour

The easiest part of the art. Thank you Magic Wand and Paint Bucket.

I like to add some gradients to the colours to break it up. Like the bottom of the armour and ears.

Background

I will admit backgrounds are not my strong point, so from this point onwards I kinda freestyled everything.

The far background area has no line art. This is to push the focal point of the image further forward and the background back.

Lighting / Shading

Shiny armour. This lighting couldn't be any more wrong - but it works.

Details

Magic *snort* *snort*

I wanna work on my magic. I like the glowy but its flat and lacking... well magic. 

Final Touches

Added a warm filter and the requested speech bubble.

Overall this is pretty cute. Got a lot out of this.