Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Warrior - Initial Sketches



The warrior character for HILT started off as a man. As with most of my own concept art, it's a case of having a vague idea of what I am looking for and sketching until I uncover the exact look that fits my preconceptions, that matches the feel I am after. The male version just wasn't hitting the mark and so I experimented with a female version.

 I was attempting to make the character look quite formidable and capable while still retaining some sexiness and it wasn't until the sixth sketch that I hit upon a design that I thought had some potential. What I liked about this design was the fluid curves of her hips and legs against the sharp angles of the fur cloak.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

HILT Cover Art



This is the cover for Hilt. I spent quite a bit of time getting the composition right. I had initially intended for a more straight on composition with the warrior at the bottom of the piece looking back at the avalanche of knights chasing her, but decided against this because you wouldn't be able to see her face. As such I went for this more kinetic image.

Having settled on a composition the next step was to do the pencilling. I spent a lot of time on this step with the intention of skipping the inking stage and using the pencil scan as the inks. Unfortunately the scan I got was not suitable straight up for the final art and so a fair bit of tidying up was required.

Once the 'inks' were done it was on to the colour and background. This part of the process is great fun as the image comes together. The final act was to increase the size of the warrior herself. This really helped make the image more immersing by exaggerating the depth. Finally, the arrow was added and puts the icing on the action.

Prints of this cover will be available from my table in Artist's Alley at the Brisbane Supanova this weekend. I will be at Pete & Nick's Art Nuggets booth (booth L2) in Artist's Alley.

Check out my parent blog ArtNugget.Net for more artwork...

Welcome to HILT!

This blog is intended to be a development diary for the comic short story HILT which I will be producing over the next six months. Here you will find the collected the artwork and musings created during the process. I hope you find it interesting and entertaining.