Production Daries 12/06/19

Using the same method from yesterday, I made portrait faces of Kyra the Sorceress and Lilith the Rogue.

I then went on to making a title screen/general background for my flash game. I had downloaded some free brushes that were cloud-like and elemental a vision in my head of what I wanted the background to look like.

Something purple and magical, a sky with purple clouds, magical lights and twinkling stars.

I first made a gradient background from a blue toned purple to pink, like a sunset about to go into the nights sky.

Then on a new layer using the elemental flame brush I downloaded, I drew random swirling lines in a bright pink colour. I was going to cover most of this up with clouds later but i wanted some magical lights to be peeking through. I also added some cirrus style clouds in the background to give the artwork more depth and added some pink rain to give it even more depth.

On a new layer I started painting in some clouds and sparkles.

I began layering the clouds to give it a more realistic and interesting look, adjusting the opacity a lot.

I used varied amounts of opacity with the clouds to give it further depth. The back clouds almost look like mountains.

And this is the finished background piece. I think it will work wonderfully as my title screen and background pages. It's not just a plain background but it's also not too much and wont take your eye away from what's on the page.

https://www.sketchbook.com/blog/cloud-brushes-free-brush-set-for-drawing-clouds/

I used the above tutorial (which also gave the free brush set) to help me with the clouds.

After making the background I realised I wanted to completely redesign my mage character and listen to what people had said in the survey I made. I found this burst of motivation and self belief that I could make my characters look way better, so that's what I did. I not only redesigned my mage, i also completely redrew Avicia the warrior and Lilith the rogue.

For Kyra the mage, I almost completely redesigned her outfit. When I was sketching outfit designs for Avicia the warrior, I drew something that i thought would look better on the sorceress. So I decided to draw that design's top half, and combine it with the bottom half of the original sorceress outfit.

When thinking of colours, I really wanted to make sure that Kyra's clothes wouldn;t blend into her skin like before, so instead of making gold the main colour, I decided to make purple the main colour. At first I wasn't so sure of this because it was a bit different to my initial idea, but sometimes you have to change things in order for them to work, and I'm glad I did because I am so happy with the results.

As you can see above, there's a picture of a gold tutorial which I found online. I followed this, using the colour picker to match the colours on the tutorial so the gold pieces on the mage actually looked like shiny gold and not part of her skin.

And here is the final result. I still kept the moon pattern on her skirt as people from my survey said they really liked that. Overall I think it looks a a hundred times better from my previous Kyra Design which I will insert below for you to compare.

I still can't draw hands or feet but there's not much I can do about that unless I want to spend hours drawing them which I do not have the time to do.

It took me about 3 hours to complete this.

I next moved on to Avicia the warrior.

I wanted to keep everything about Avicia the same but improve the detailing and shading on her amour.

I tried out a few different ways of shading, but i found that following the same "gold" tutorial from when I was working on the gold parts of Kyra's outfit, but just adjusting the colours to be red, worked really really well.

And here we have the final design of Avicia the Warrior. As you can see, her outfit is the same but there is some major shading differences. I am so much happier with this result. It looks a lot better than what I previously created.

Next up was Lilith the rogue. I didn't want to change much, I just wanted to give her outfit a bit of shading to make it look better and to match her new head.

I forgot to mention before, but my process with this was very similar to the process for making the face which I learnt from the tutorial. Starting off with a basic sketch, then turning it into a rough sketch on a new layer, then turning it into line work on an even newer layer then, on a new layer, colouring it in, then on a new layer, adding shading and highlights. I found working this way helped me to stay on task and organised.

Honestly I wasn't really sure of how to shade Lilith's clothes to make them better, so I just kept it minimal. Her clothes aren't metal like Avicia's or like the gold parts on Kyra's outfit so using that wouldn't be effective.

As you can see I didn't add much shading at all, but what I did do was shade a bit around the pockets and gave everything a little bit of texture so it doesn't look so flat. I wish I could of done more with this, but i don't really have enough time to be doing what I'm doing already.

Last up was the weapons.

For Kyra's weapon, I just changed the colour scheme a bit and added in the gold tutorial I'd found so it matched Kyra and looks more realistic.

For Avicia's weapon, I added a transparent glass panel to the weapon. I did this because this weapons main ability it to fill up with blood, then shoot it out into arrows, so showing that there's a glass panel indicated that it's hollow and can be filled.

For Lilith's dagger, just added sparkles to the gem to make it look prettier.

And that's that. I've officially redesigned everything.

It took me less time than I thought it would, mainly because i did everything one after the other for 2 days straight but I am so happy with the results and I am so glad I did this even though it was a big risk. It could of gone completely wrong and I still could of been unhappy with my results. But I think this just proves that my art skills are better than I think they are. They still need improving of course and now I have discovered Autodesk sketchbook, I can really work on my digital art skills.

I feel like I have improved my characters so much. I have listened to what people said in my survey and really tried to make them better. Now to put everything into Animate!