Wacom Spotlight: The Defender

I decided rather than just tossing out all of my best work in one big slough of posts, I'll do spotlights on specific ones, just cuz I feel like the better pieces of work deserve at least some better explanation and credit. For today's (there might be more today since I'm starting out obviously) I'll be talking about a pre-mission piece I did called The Defender.


This one was one I had a pretty clear picture of in my head, as seen by the outline I did. This was done during the time when I had started figure drawing classes, so the pose isn't too bad that way, maybe not completely realistic, but I like how I framed him in the canvas. When I had him in my mind I just knew I wanted some cool armor and a cool sword.

After developing it a little bit, I started just piecing together the sword, followed by the armor. I really like the color scheme for the sword, the only part that I'm still not fond of is the hilt, it's a little too heavily detailed to fit the runic blade and claw-looking hand guard. It's kinda a subtle detail, but if you look at this earlier version, the blade was originally planned to be much broader and even a little bit shorter. As I went through the rest of the armor and everything I realized that it just didn't fit the guys size and implied physique. So as I did the finishing touches I slimmed and stretched the blade out a little to fit him better.


The "final" product turned out really well detail wise, I really like how the armor has the gold highlights  and trim. The fabric might not be perfect, but I think I at least disguised the fact that I don't know how to do fabric folds :D The obvious problem with the picture is it's lack of a background, which is tricky because I made the lighting on this drawing come from above and to the right, and the original idea had The Defender facing some demon or glowy monster, which would have made him just a silhouette. So, this is obviously a good place for input if anyone has an suggestions or ideas on what kind of background would look good here. Obviously backgrounds aren't my strong point so I might be a little limited, but it's always good practice to try a new one out!