FMP Week 3&4: Skaarl handpainting

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Update on the WIP:
- Majority is done, but I still have to do a pass of overlay/multiply and color dodge to polish.
- Also needed: bringing all the models together and tie-ing the colours
- I am not sure about Skaarl's eyes. The concept clearly shows her with pupils and anime-ish rendered eyes, and I tried those but I kinda like this pupil-less version more. It makes her feel more like an underwater creature. But. I know from the lore (which made me tear up btw, such a cute tale of an unusual friendship :D) that Skaarl is not meant to be super scary, more like super scared :D She's just an immortal goofball. I'm really on the fence with this one. I'll have to ask some people for feedback!
- I'm also not sure if her ears should be this small. They look okay proportionally but they look bigger in the concept. Fortunately enlarging them would not be that big of a deal as they're modeled as floating geo. Another bit I need to get feedback on :)

For now I'll try to give my eyes some rest from this turqoise beauty and focus on the weapon which I also want to use as an opportunity to study metals in depth.

Weapon WIP 1 


Weapon WIP 2 (progress)


















I went back to  Katia's amazing tutorial series to gain some inspiration and notes:

- Don't be afraid to try out striations on your metals and materials. Do it with overlay on another layer and if it's not working, just delete it. Better to try out and iterate if it can add interest to your work.

I love how polished and interesting Katia's textures look. The mastery over materials is something I get inspired by every time I see her art. I tried to analyze some of her painting and kept some notes I can come back to when rendering:

I'm really enjoying this and learning so much! My next project is going to be a PBR one, it will be sad to say goodbye to the handpainting for a bit, but I'm super looking forward to working in ZBrush again :D I'll also try out some polypaint methods I saw in Leslie Van Den Broeck's work, so that shouldn't be too far from handpainting anyway. I just wish I had at least 48 hours in a day or no need for sleep.

 I'm also happy to say I'll be representing my university in the NUEL TFT championship. No idea how I'll make time for it with two part time jobs and such intense projects but it's my last uni year (hopefully, haha) so I've got to fit as much exciting stuff in as I can! :D 

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