Future tribe character - final development

After my iterations were done, I had to choose one to develop into the final project. After asking lots of people with and no background in art and also following my instinct I ended up choosing the first iteration, which was not actually the first that I drew, but the first one in the picture from the previous post: The royal guard

Since my iterations were quite developed from the get-go, I did not really have to think about the materials, since I have already done that previously. What I did have to think about though was the colour palette and how the back view was going to look like. I ended up making one with lots of turquoise shades, blues, violet, pink, but also complementary colours. 

The shorts were going to be made out of fish skin, the top from some elastic material, the same with the belt, the shoes from some thick material. The wires that are holding the glowing spheres were going to be electricity wires and the shoulder armour metal pieces repurposed from some tech objects from the city. The glowing spheres were taken from glowing fish from the deep ocean. The tubes that are connecting the shoulder armour were going to be recycled from the city as well. The strips attached to the material belt were going to be jellyfish tentacles. For the spear, the tube that he is holding it from was going to be a pipe from the city, and the sharp things bits of coral found in the ocean, everything being held together by an elastic material and electricity wires...

Then the redrawing part has begun. I used the techniques shown in the video from blackboard to sketch the pose that i had in mind. I made sure that both proportions and perspective were correct throughout the entire process.

I made a rough sketch first and then added cylinders and other geometric figures to achieve the form that I wanted. The character was going to be well built, making sense for his purpose in the tribe. I found that working on the front view and back view at the same time was the best approach. 

Then I searched the entire internet for references of the musculature and the anatomy of the human body. I wanted everything to be correct from that standpoint. 

    Then I sketched in the anatomy on top of everything, looking at tons of different photos. I even asked a friend to pose his arm and hand for me so I could make a sketch. 

Then I added the clothes on top of that, and sketched in the face. Deciding how my character was going to look like was a hard process, but I ended up choosing him:

At this point I made some changes to the design, getting rid of the cuts in the clothes, since they did not look high class at all, and he is supposed to be a royal guard.

Then, the renderring process has started. 

Firstly, I added some different block colours to every object, so I could easily paint inside of them afterwards.

I have not painted any of these thing in photoshop before, and I was struggling picking up the brushes. I ended up choosing the wet oil paint one, painting the big shadows and highlists first, and then adding the midtones and details. I chose a more traditional painting approach which ended up looking extremely good and realistic in the end in my eyes.

Painting was very fun and challenging the same time. I had to choose where the light was coming from, where the highlits were going to be, what shadows would be casted, while always mentaining the tones of every element. For the clothes, I had to think about how the mucles underneath would look like, making use of the anatomy of folds that i have studied previously. For the shorts I ended up making a costom scaly brush that saved a lot of work time. For the hair I have used the hair brushes Craig has linked us to, which were extremely helpful! 

In the end I want to say that I am extremely proud of the outcome and I couldn not be happier with the result. The enourmous amount of work time that I put into it was definitely worth it!