Legend of Zelda Redux | Twinrova

My competition piece was Twinrova with a “Tron” twist on the character design.

Well, this is a much more completed version of the digital painting in the competition.  And that is what I get for procrastinating.  But here it is.  Head over to the finals thread and check out the other great entries from other amazing artists.  This, again, was a very humbling experience.

I had a very hard time keeping myself motivated for this painting.  I originally thought that the idea would come together pretty smooth, but I ran into some difficulties.  One difficulty was making sure that the character would be recognizable, based on the original.

I had a hard time designing the outfit in such a way that it would keep well to the original, but also have the simplicity of the costumes in Tron. Not to say that the costumes in Tron are overly simple, but that the two worlds designs are drastically different.  And because of this problem, I don’t feel that the original character represents, good enough, in this new design.  I should have spent just a little more time  trying to figure out how to bridge that design gap.

And another difficulty, that was self imposed, was my overall process.  I wanted to work from a line art base, to a more realistic finished product.  I hadn’t tried this kind of process for a long time, and I felt very insecure about this painting because of it, until about the last hour of painting.  This seems to be a common technique, and I should keep up with it by switching between value and line.

But as for positives.  I like the composition, pose, color, and depth in the painting.  I tried to simplify the background as much as possible.  Seeing this is a character design competition, I should probably try to bring the viewers focus to the character.

Also, a few things that I haven’t really done before.  Trying to simulate refraction with glass in the foreground and other areas of the painting.  Another, being the black hi gloss surface of the face plate.

Overall I am happy with painting, and it seems to show that I am progressing in the areas of composition, anatomy, material rendering, and color theory.  Some progress is better than none, right?