Bearer of Tragedy
Making a Scene
Most of my illustrations consist of character portraits, usually from the bust or waist up, with a minimal background. Creating a scene with multiple characters, in-depth perspectives and expressive poses, all living in an environment, is a great undertaking I usually avoid. Posing characters together is a particularly daunting challenge, as it can very easily come out looking unnatural if you don’t properly account for depth. However, I had an idea for a piece that would take place in a vast setting, with multiple characters interacting with one another at different distances. I knew it would be difficult to create, but the vision in my head was very clear, so I went ahead with planning the piece.
Reference-less
Although this piece revolves around characters from a popular pre-existing game, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the appearances of the two main characters in the piece, Felix and his older brother Glenn, were original designs, as Glenn never physically appears in the game, and Felix is never shown at a young age. This presented a unique challenge. I don’t particularly struggle with character design–however, when you’re designing something yourself it is more difficult to find references for the elements and materials included in the design. Additionally, the pose between the brothers was difficult to find references for and took a large mix of different references to get right.
Tone Ties It Together
After finding the appropriate references for the character designs (mainly references from the game, with some real-world armour references), I completed the sketch with only minor tweaks while finishing the cleaned-up line work. Once I finally had a piece ready for rendering, I was feeling confident in the direction of the piece. I had realized at this stage that the piece was going in a slightly different direction than what I originally imagined, but I was happy with the state of it nonetheless. The original idea had been for the setting of a war-torn kingdom square with tattered flags and other soldiers lying about, but new knowledge about the fictional events of the story the piece was based on caused me to change directions setting-wise. This new setting, however, provided an opportunity for dramatic lighting that would lend to the dark tone of the piece well.
Taking Scope in Stride
I knew going into this piece that it would have a very large scope and that the initial sketch especially would require lots of revisions. In the past, I’ve had a bad habit of wanting to jump right into a piece or finish it in one or two sittings. While that’s sometimes attainable, drawing this piece in a few sittings would have been a terrible idea. Instead, I planned out different aspects of this illustration, let ideas I wasn’t sure about stew for a while before jumping into them, and broke the process of drawing into many different sittings, particularly for the sketching phase. I found that taking my time in this way allowed me to create a solid sketch with confidence and see how things could move in a different direction, adjusting the piece accordingly. The end result was a depth-filled scene, supported by its poses, lighting, and setting.