BA3b Creative Practice

Week 12 - Promotional Art #2 - The Magic Horse

Creative Practice

Promotional Art #2 - The Magic Horse

My second promotional image will be featuring the magic horse which resides where Baba Yaga lives. Firstly I will need to design the horse, which will most likely look inherently evil since it was created by Koschei's and Baba Yaga's magic - but is actually good and desperate to escape the place; but cannot due to a spell that prevents it from leaving. That is, until Ivan and Marya arrive to help the horse escape.

Creating the Horse Base

Because we don't have too long left, I decided that I would paint over an existing image of a horse instead of sketching it separately. This is purposely to save time and to quickly create a base I could easily iterate from. Below shows my process, which starts with the image; then is blurred using Filter > Noise > Median on Photoshop. I love the Median filter because it gives a slight painterly look with harsh edges to keep the form and silhouette, whereas the standard Blur tools do not. After this I was able to paint over the horse to give it a more hand painted feel that would fit when I create my variations. I think this method is great because it gives me a nicely rendered horse for around only 5-10 minutes work.

Part 1 Iteration

These were the first batch of horses I iterated upon using my original horse painting/manipulation as a base. I really liked the idea of incorporating the skeleton somehow, so I managed to find some diagrams of the horse skeleton and then drew the basic bones and form on top of my existing one. I really like the blue colour but it seems a bit bright for what I'm going for as the rest of my designs have been quite traditional and Slavic looking. I don't want the horse to look too out of place within the world itself I have created.

Part 2 Iteration

These were my next set of iterations, where I wanted to play around with a couple more body types in addition to the saddle designs. My favourite from these is definitely the one with wool underneath, as I think this fits well with the medieval setting and looks visually appealing underneath the darker saddle and black horse.

Part 3 Iteration

Lastly I tried some various armour designs and different mane types. I don't think I'll end up using these as i'm not too keen on covering the design of the horse, and since Baba Yaga stays in her home - she would have no need to place armour on this particular horse. Even so, I really had fun with these designs and it was good experience for me to do some more extended iteration!

Final Horse

In the end this was the horse I chose, with my main reasoning being that I didn't want it to look too high fantasy and moreso traditional. Because my whole project has a historical and traditional foundation, I didn't want to stray away from that by making my horse super fantastical. I like the idea of the smokey/flaming manes but to me it felt a bit too much, and I believe that this horse probably wouldn't be in full armour as Marya and Ivan rescue it as it would be done hastily. Overall, I really like the combination of black and white, it gives a very neutral feeling which was what I wanted as this horse isn't meant to be evil, but was created from evil magic. I think this is a good contrast which shows the balance well by being these colours.

Promotional Image

Progress

Now it was actually onto the promotional image itself! To create this I used a photo as a base and then worked on top of that, however I changed the pose of the arms completely to show Marya unsheathing her sword. I decided to go straight into the image instead of the composition as I had done lots of iteration on the horse this week and needed to start working on this.

This whole image gave me a lot of trouble, especially with the lighting - which I couldn't seem to figure out unfortunately. In the end I decided to make a post on Polycount which is explained below, where I managed to get some great feedback using a light blue 'Multiply' layer over where the shadows should be which helped give so much more depth to the image. She also helped me to add in some extra highlights in addition to brightening the edges of the sky and making the mountains at the front slightly darker since they were closer towards us.

Polycount Feedback

Because I was having a lot of trouble with lighting in this piece, I created a post on Polycount asking for some help on the 2D Critiques forum. Thankfully someone did a paint-over which showed what I needed to add, which was the cool blue lighting which was missing from the shadows against my character. I have written my adjustments in the process part above but this was extremely helpful and I can't thank this person enough!

Left - The original version I posted, Right - The painted-over Version

Final Piece

In the end this was my final piece, which I think is okay but as a whole I'm very unhappy with it. It just shows how much I need to push my colour theory as I was struggling with it the whole time, even after the Polycount critique. One thing I do like with this though is the background, considering I'm not the best with environments I think I did well with it. I didn't use any photos for the sky so I'm pretty proud of how it turned out against the foreground.

Professional Practice

At the end of each week I will be looking at job opportunities in my chosen specialism, relating to the role of a Concept Artist and/or Illustrator to further my knowledge of what it takes to be hired within the industry and what employers are looking for. These will include unrealistic expectations that I don't meet as of yet, but I feel that it's good to be aware of them.

Important: Some links may be available at the time of submission if the job has been filled, which is why I have written the date accessed and have presented screenshots.

Company: Gamesys Job Title: Senior Character Designer / 2D Illustrator Link to Job Page (Accessed 8th May 2017)