This is the rough drawing I did for what became "Daybreak Archer" for Magic: The Gathering. It was drawn smaller than I usually do when I'm trying to work out a composition for a painting but sometimes that helps. If things aren't working right in the drawing phase, I'll switch sizes to get a different look. Usually I go down in size since the images for Magic are only a couple inches wide in the end product anyway. Plus, going down in size will simplify shapes and it ends up making it easier to piece together something that works. That's what happened here (though this isn't quite "thumbnail" in size - it's about 6 inches wide I think).
On occasion I will ditch the thumbnails and jump into drawing out an image at full size or nearly full size. For me sometimes the little rough thumbnails aren't helping and I need bigger pieces and some important details put in before I can "see" where it's going. When that happens, it is usually because I feel a certain facial expression (or a similar "mood" detail) is the key to the whole image. If I can just nail down the right face, I can piece in everything else.
What's that you ask? Was there a background for this piece or was the mysterious bow-gunner just on a field of white? She's in a forest - the trees were added much later in the process and so never were part of the original drawing.
You can definitely rock a tricorn hat sir. Very nice.
ReplyDeletevery cool, i like the bow design alot, im curious what that latch on the bottom does though.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree, the way you drew the hat makes a really cool shape! I love the off kilter pose to.
ReplyDeleteThe crossbow/bow is screwing me up though.. it's asymmetrical correct? The bottom "arm" of it kinda looks like it's going back into space but that's impossible since we're seeing it flat on... maybe I'm just an idiot.
I love this sketch! There's definitely a tricorn flavor to that hat but it's much more stylized and cooler. This reminds me of that cool French movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf. This is one of my favorite sketches I've seen you post. Bravo!
ReplyDeleteFor those of you not in the know, the upcoming Magic: The Gathering set: Innistrad is a gothic horror setting and the base is all those classic european horror tropes like werewolves, vampires, zombies, "frankenstein" type monsters, creepy "bump-in-the-night" stuff, etc. Steve Belledin, Daarken, and I worked on the concept design phase - and that kind of Brotherhood of the Wolf and Sleepy Hollow era was inspiration. Indeed, those movies as well as a handful of others were playing as we churned out the drawings. Lots of pseudo-tri-corn hats.
ReplyDeleteAs for the weapon, actual fire arms are a no-no in M:tG - so we couldn't have muskets or blunderbusses or anything like that. But typical medieval weaponry just didn't seem right. So we came up with musket-inspired crossbows (so-to-speak). To tell ya the truth, I have no damn idea how this bowgun would actually work. It just needed to look like it COULD work somehow - especially when placed in the hands of someone in this setting. The bottom part of the bow is shorter than the top because it looked cooler that way - I just made it appear like somehow through some mechanism there was some way it matched the tension of the top part of the bow. Damn it! - I'm an artist, not a scientist (or an engineer), Jim!
You mean you DON'T build working prototypes of all the weapons you draw? And here I am thinking you're some sort of professional...
ReplyDeletePshaw!
i love this card... but not really cause the card is all that special, i just really liked the drawing and design of it. Great job, man.
ReplyDelete