Here goes a little preview from the upcoming Rainbow Dreams project but before we take a tour I’d like to mention some person. When I saw Delney Carbon (DC) stuff I immediately recognize that he could do amazing designs for water culture in Rainbow Dreams universe. I’ve been working with many people and sometimes you just see the person that fits perfectly to the project.
Working in a such team where everyone is in sync is an amazing experience and it’s a great joy to see other guys came up with stunning ideas. DC already fleshed out water dancers and now furiously working on one of the characters.
Now, back to Aquapolis. Located at the west ocean Aquapolis is a huge city mixing various cultures and styles like a fantasy Babylon. It’s a hot spot or hub for commercial traffic from east to west and to many other countries. Officially the city is ruled by the group of citizens, representatives of noble families and guilds.
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Whoa… spend almost a day working on a single shot! I started with a pencil sketch, when scan it and repaint digitally a few times. Once I was happy with the look I printed it out on paper and traced the drawing with ballpoint pen and scan it again… can you imagine?!
However the result still wasn’t good and I was really disappointed. The graphic novel look (or, if you prefer, comic look) I was aiming for wasn’t there. It looked like crap actually and I feel quite miserable about it. In the drawing process this is a critical point, you either drop your artwork and admit the defeat or continue the fight. I choose fight and throw heavy artillery…
Current test comp looks like this, although the colors are missing (yeah, it’s gonna be a color novel, so you can imagine the workload!):
Usually Selena doesn’t talk like that, but you can get an idea of her temper and attitude towards humans. And I can’t help myself but it appears as spagetti western instead of fantasy tale!
Selena (the girl you see on banner) is a youth elf and skyship captain. She’s one of the main protagonists of Rainbow Dreams project I’m currently developing.
Selena was born and risen in elven tribe, living in tropical archipelago of Rainbow Dreams world. Her home is a group of islands lost in the ocean. There are huge mountains covered with lush and exotic vegetation. Countless rivers flowing down to the ocean making it looks like a riverworld. If you hike somewhere you’ll see huge trees and flowers with lots and lots of roots and vines. The foliage is so big sometimes that you can park a few cars on just one leaf.
Here is a recent concept art depicting Selena’s home islands seen from the beach. Obviously you can’t say it’s super exotic but just wait till the next shots!
Man, sometimes character design could be cumbersome. You knew almost exactly how your character should look and feel but you still can’t get a picture of it. I’m talking about Iris Noa, one of the leading characters from Rainbow Dreams project. I’ve came up with her idea somewhere in 2007 and spent hella a lot on rendering her variations. The recent one (facial closeup) was an enormous rendering process with me painting every pore in her skin and every hair until it looks good in my eyes.
I’ve posted in online to see the reaction and the results were so-so. Some 3D guys liked the texture but the whole character doesn’t fired up the emotions I need. For the character designer it means that (s)he wasn’t successful in translation of characteristics or design is really weak. It feels, well, not suck but more like you have to find a key that unlocks a flow. Each character concentrates and represents some energy so you feel sympathy or anger or crush or something else to him/her. If you don’t bother at all it means that there is no flow between you and character.
Even if you’ve years and years of experience under your belt you can’t avoid obstacles. Some younger artists may look at your work and think, dude this guy is awesome! but you don’t feel so. You constantly see new challenges and trying to deal with them. It’s not a big deal anymore to draw some superhero chick you’ve been dreaming 10 years ago (it’s all about chest and legs guys!), but your mind is working on puzzles like how to express this and that character trait and so on. This is where most of tutorilas fail because they focused on external side (how to draw) and not internal (what to draw). So you’ve to rely on your own, personal experience and try to express that character you’re looking for.
Oh my, I’ve to go back to my desk and start again!
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