Making Of 'Ruo'

Introduction

This piece is the third character that I have created for personal work; a dark magician with cool looks and a gloomy, cold personality. I wanted his costume to not be too armoured, but to be more modern-looking, and I intended to have the space featuring some magical steel on the wall, and so I started doing research and finding references to help me on my way.

References

Here are some costumes I found on GQ web. One of the outfits is actually by my favourite fashion designer, John Galliano. So I tried to aim for the same feeling in my character's clothing design (Fig.01 and Fig.02).

Fig. 01_photo_refrences

Fig. 01_photo_refrences

Fig. 02_photo_refrences

Fig. 02_photo_refrences

3D Work

I started in 3D first of all, because I wanted to get an exaggerated perspective, and I figured 3D would help a lot. So I went to Maya, where I started to model some simple basic shapes as references (Fig.03).

Fig. 03_3d_pose

Fig. 03_3d_pose

Colour

In this piece I didn't start from a sketch. Instead I just started painting over the 3D shape. It was just like 3D modelling, really: you model the body first and add the clothes second! So I painted the body first, just using Photoshop's basic default round brush to paint (Fig.04).

Fig. 04_male_human_pose

Fig. 04_male_human_pose

I then started to design the hair style, which I wanted to be punk-like, mixed with reggae braids (Fig.05).

Fig. 05_adding_hair

Fig. 05_adding_hair



Next I painted the shirt, which included buttons decorated with a traditional Chinese lion pattern (Fig.06).

Fig. 06_adding_shirt_details

Fig. 06_adding_shirt_details

Then, I started to design the upper suit and added some Sanskrit to the sleeve (Fig.07).

Fig. 07_adding_jacket

Fig. 07_adding_jacket

The tie was then included, with a skull and some metal on it, and I added some metal in the form of a Chinese pattern onto the suit, and also two skulls, to achieve more of a punk feeling (Fig.08)!

Fig. 08_adding_jacket_details_and_tie

Fig. 08_adding_jacket_details_and_tie

I started to paint the pants and added the sleeve for the shirt (Fig.09) and then I imported the chair image, made in Maya, and painted the shoes (Fig.10).

Fig. 09_trousers

Fig. 09_trousers

Fig. 10_clothing_details

Fig. 10_clothing_details

I also added Sanskrit to the bottom of pants - same as for the sleeves of the upper suit - refined the shoes and changed the suit colour to red (Fig.11),I saved the 3D image as a perspective guide line to check that everything worked the way I wanted it to (Fig.12).

Fig. 11_adding_colour

Fig. 11_adding_colour

Fig. 12_using_3d_for_2d

Fig. 12_using_3d_for_2d

The background image was modelled in 3D, for the chair I used a Chinese lion sculpture for the arm rests, with Eight Trigrams (a set of symbolic signs created in ancient China) (Fig.13).

Fig. 13_adding_chair

Fig. 13_adding_chair

At this point, I was still trying to think about what the background should look like (and it was really bothering me!) (Fig.14).

Fig. 13_colour_tones

Fig. 13_colour_tones

I refined the background and put more work into the lighting, but I still didn't know how the colour tone should look. So, I used the Color Balance option to adjust the colour tone; I tried to give it a warmer tone to see how it would look, but I didn't feel it worked with the character, so I reverted back to the colder blue tones (Fig.15 & Fig.16).

Fig. 14_adding_chair_details

Fig. 14_adding_chair_details

Fig. 15_shadows_lighting

Fig. 15_shadows_lighting

Because I was still struggling with the background at this stage, I got stuck into detailing work on the chair and designing the feature of the metal with some glowing light on it - making it more sci-fi looking (Fig.17).

Fig. 16_depth_lighting

Fig. 16_depth_lighting

I then cut the pattern and pieced it together for the ground texture (Fig.18). I thought the ground should be made of a marble-like stone, so I copied the legs and chair to create the reflection on the ground (the same goes for the reflection on the chair) (Fig.19 & Fig.20).

Fig. 17_adding_floor_textures

Fig. 17_adding_floor_textures

Fig. 18_adding_reflections

Fig. 18_adding_reflections

Fig. 19_lighting

Fig. 19_lighting

I copied the light (Eight Trigrams), enlarged it and blurred it to make the light lie nicely on the ground (Fig.21 and Fig.22).

Fig. 20_finishing_touches

Fig. 20_finishing_touches

Fig. 21_adding_more_details

Fig. 21_adding_more_details

I then used the Color Balance tool to give the picture more blue and purple tones, and a generally colder feeling (Fig.23).

Fig. 22_ambient_lights

Fig. 22_ambient_lights

Glowing Effects

To create the "glowing magic" in the scene, I used an abstract brush that I'd downloaded from a graphic design website (Fig.24).

Fig. 23_force_smoke_effects

Fig. 23_force_smoke_effects

I used the Free Transform tool to transform and scale the "glowing magic" (Fig.25) and I then copied the magic brush many times, and blurred the result (Fig.26).

Fig. 24_magical_powers

Fig. 24_magical_powers

Fig. 25_magical_effects

Fig. 25_magical_effects

And after some final tweaks and adjustments, here is the final image (Fig.27)!

Fig. 27

Fig. 27

So, here I have just talked you through some of the methods that I used while working on this piece. I hope my working pipeline has been of interest to you and will maybe help you in your own projects! If you have any questions or suggestion, please feel free to let me know.

Thanks!

Enter content...

Fetching comments...

Post a comment