[Lunatique]

I had to redo a lot of this drawing, since the file I was working on got corrupted. I was ready to give up since the deadline is closing in fast, but I decided to give it another shot.

The finished drawing depicts Princess Ruu (most people know her as my avatar, or from the painting "Melancholic Princess") at the right hand bottom. She's wearing her fancy gown because there's a scene where the palace was attacked during a royal ball, and being the brave Princess she is, Ruu straps on her sword and joins her troops in the fight (of course, against everyone's protest).

In the left, we have a large image of the enemy commander--who was at one point Ruu's childhood sweetheart. The polar-opposite positions they find themselves in as adults is a stark contrast from how close they were as children.

On the bottom left, we have a few trusted members of the underground rebellion who vowed to resurrect the empire after it had fallen. They are in a sense, the only family Ruu has left after the empire's defeat.

Behind the characters on the bottom, we see the royal palace, and the grand entrance, lined with statues of guardian angels and energy shield arches.

On the top, we see a giant ring, made up of interconnected alien constructs. They are the source of the conflict, and the force behind the envasion. We also see lots of attack ships and armoured exo-troops, descending from the sky and carrying out a full-scale invasion.
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[Lunatique]

I made some changes--mainly the location of the ring construct, added more ships, changed the size of the mothership, moved the Princess a little, and resized the enemy commander a little and moved him to the left so he's not so close to the center line of the palace.

[Sumaleth]

I'm not sure the top half is working for me -- the space ships bit doesn't feel "epic" enough. With that top-down view I'm worried the mothership will end up looking like a toy surrounded by bees.

I'd be tempted to try a much larger mothership, and have it at a more imposing angle (looking up at it, not down, for a start).

Just an idea.
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[Lunatique]

Actually, you're looking at the side of the mothership. Maybe I need to revamp the design to make it more obvious.

I like your idea of looking up at it though--it creates a psychological effect--an oppressive force.

[Matthew]

I agree here with Suma and u Luna about the frog-perspective but I thought we were already seeing the bottom of the ship, looks like the bottom to me so just if you would make it follow the perspective of the ring it could look awesome, just an idea.
Nice to see you keep painting and drawing, keep up the good work Luna.

sry about the dark lines, I multiplied and stuff when I rotated the ship.


have a nice day.

[Lunatique]

I've roughed in the general color scheme, although this is not set in stone. I might try different color scheme/lighting/time of day versions and see which one I like the most.

Matthew - that angle might work. I'll try a version with it and see how it looks.

[P-Rik]

Woo Very nice ...!!

The only thing which hurt me is the proportions of the guy with his sword to the left... The head is too big or the arm is too small.

Good luck to you!!
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[Lunatique]

I went ahead and changed the composition a bit. My very first composition is very similar to what I have now, except I kept thinking there isn't enough background to depict the epic feeling, so I made the characters smaller and added a detailed royal palace behind them. However, as plouffe and Isric pointed out at eatpoo, it doesn't look as good. So, I debated with myself for a while and decided that I'd rather have a stronger composition than one that tried too hard to cater to what I think fits the challenge's theme.

I've also changed the angle of the mothership, as Sumaleth suggested. Seeing it's belly gives it a more "towering over" feeling.

I've started to fine tune the values, and once I get it close enough to what I think works best, I'll fade the line drawing, merge all the layers, and then start the final painting.

[Lunatique]

I'm really torn between showing enough of the background or having a stronger composition. I did this version to see if a square aspect ratio might work. This gives me enough of the background, while keeping the composition somewhat similar to what I had before. What do you guys think?

[watmough]

it ruins the movie-poster feel.

[Lunatique]

[watmough]

ooooh yeah...i can see that working better!

[Lunatique]

I've added 1/3 to the top, which reverts it back to the movie poster aspect ratio. More of the ring construct is showing now, and I've moved the palace a bit, resized the enemy commander a bit, and added a few more armoured ex0-troopers. I think I'm getting close to the point where I'll start painting it. If you guys have anymore suggestion, tell me now before I start painting it.

[Lunatique]

Here's what I've painted of Princess Ruu so far. I try to keep her looking as melancholic and ethereal as people have known her as, but give her enough of a "I must lead my people against all odds to restore the empire" expression so that she doesn't look like a basket case.


The enemy commander. The little patches of colors are:

1- brightest value on the Princess
2- brightest value on the rebels
3- brightest value on the enemy commander
4- lights on the palace
5- brightest wall on the palace

I want to make sure the strongest point of interest contained the brightest value in the entire picture, and this little comparison helped me see what I needed to tweak.


I painted the space, the planet, added a couple of moons, and started painting the ring construct, but I realized it would take me an eternity to paint the design I had in my head, so I decided to build the bulk of it in 3D (Maya) as the base to work from.


I used Maya to build the base for the alien ring construct (basically a loosely connect mass of monoliths forming a ring). I knew there must be a way to quickly generate what I wanted by using mel scripts and clever expressions, but I'm not a techie guy, and I hate dealing with that stuff. I ended up doing it all by hand. The steps were:

1) Made a cylinder reshaped to a ring.

2) Seperated all the faces, and moved/rotated/resized them randomly to get that loosely connect look.

3) Combined all the faces, made two duplicates of the ring construct, then rotated the duplicates so I get triple the amount of monoliths.

4) Duplicated random faces and moved them around the ring to create scattered monoliths.

5) Realized I forgot to give the monoliths thickness, I selected all the faces and did a Extrude Face on them.

6) Added four lights--one orange, one blue, two greens.

7) Rendered 4 passes for each lights.

Composited them in Photoshop.


The alien ring construct is inserted into the image. Seems to look ok so far. I'll be painting all over the 3D base anywya, so it's going to look very different when finished.

[Anthony]

Lookin pretty cool so far. I think the large blue middle figure is hindering the composition a little though. Maybe try a different color setup on him or something? Looks good though, nice eyes on the girl.
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[Steven Stahlberg]

Oh yeah, now it's starting to look really epic... love that ring you did in Maya. Now be careful and don't smudge any edges in overpainting or the advantage will be lost. Remember lots of sharp detail is key to making something look huge. one shortcut is to select a near-finished area, duplicate and shrink it (a lot, like 10x or more) and paste it here and there, great for over-the-top realistic detail. The sharpen filter works great too on top of that.
Ruu is looking a bit like my favorite Jennifer Connely here, nice. Jennifer has those intense yet dreamy eyes you may be looking for, check it out.

[watmough]

those are great tips,steven stahlberg!
lunatique,looking very nice!

[Lunatique]

Anthony - I tried other colors, but blue seems the least intrusive. If you have a better suggestion, please tell me ASAP--deadline is coming up fast (17th of Jan).

Steven - Hehe, Jennifer is one of my favs too. No one looks more beautiful while being sad and soulful than she does. Kinda sucks that she's become bone-skinny after having that kid, and keeps getting skinnier in every movie she does. I think that fact she used to be a little on the round side contributed greatly to her curvaceous figure and youthful face. Ruu really isn't based on her though--more like a mixture of all the facial features I love on a woman.

That tip on detail is cool--don't know how I'd use it for this piece though.

I started shaping the faces of the rebels. I like the looseness of how I'm doing it, and maybe if I just left it like this?


Fine tuned the enemy commander's face. Still got to add a lighter value to that thing around his face.


Started to paint the mothership. The green comes from a nearby exploding ship, but it's not yet painted in here (but you see it in the sketch versions).

I'm almost sure that I can't finish the painting before the deadline. There's just too much detail in this piece, and I doubt I can hit it all before the 17th. I'm going to give it my best shot though.

[Anthony]

Just fiddling with it, hope you don't mind. Probably not the atmosphere you're looking for, but another way of seeing it.

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-Anthony
Carpe Carpem
http://www.anthonyfransella.com

[Lunatique]

Hey, that actually looks pretty cool! I like the bloom you put on some of the objects. I just might try something like it too.