Mock Scene Evaluation (Me)

Mock Scene Evaluation (Me)

 



I based my first mock scene around Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess as it’s currently what I’m playing now and enjoying, as well as Darksiders which I hope to one day play; plus it’s supposed to be a darker version of Zelda franchise.

War and Ruin from Darksiders are the main protagonists and in this scene are going against Link and Epona who’re also main protagonists. In my current story Elemental Wolves I plan for the protagonist Faith to ride Yangxin during some courses of the game, resulting in her having to do combat with swords or the art of Yabusame when riding against the antagonist forces; hence why in this picture both protagonists are riding on their mounts with weapons.

When designing this picture it took a long time to complete for several reasons. One of them being my laptop would sometimes freeze Photoshop and forces it to close down, so because there’s no auto save I would sometimes have to start again.  War had taken me two days because I was trying to perfect the shadows and the light tones on the armour which was very time consuming, then Ruin’s fire was another challenge in itself. Basically I had to keep on layering different tones of orange, red and yellows using the opacity without making it seem to dark or not ‘flowing’ like fire should and to not become too dependent on premade brushes.

Link and Epona on the other hand was a nightmare itself. I changed their pose twice because the first one Link’s anatomy didn’t seem correct and neither did his riding pose. Plus he looked more like an anorexic twig than a teenage boy. Epona’s anatomy wasn’t correct either, I found the front of her was correct with maybe her front two legs being a little too long, whilst her back end was very short and she had a massive lump for muscle. Plus the saddle straps weren’t in the correct place either.

When I finally got the characters completed my main idea for the backdrop was a volcanic place where larva and fire was erupting from different places. I quickly decided against this I thought it would distract the public’s eye away from the protagonists and Ruin’s fire wouldn’t be exaggerated to a certain extent, which I chose a darker backdrop.

What I did I like about this piece is the initial idea of the poses and the colouring of the art, despite it being a pain. In my opinion I also feel this is what I’ve improved on the most because I despise colouring my images in and it’s what I’ve been working on to improve. Before I started taking the shadowing and light tones seriously with the colouring my idea would be to put simple blocks of colour on an image keeping the opacity level at 100% and smudging the colours together. Finally I started messing around with opacity levels when designing horses for Deviant Art competitions and it seemed to look a lot better.

 

 

 

 

These pictures are my recent entries on Deviant Art. The green and white Arabian horse was an art trade I made someone and the left was a horse for my imaginary equestrian centre on Deviant Art known as Spirited Wings EC

I must admit I do prefer to draw night or late afternoons for backdrops.

Other than that there’s still quite a bit to improve on my cutting away at the shadows more delicately.