(original contest and winners)
This was the first online and global art contest I entered (having previously only done local and national art competitions). This was also the first truly complete digital art piece I did, which was a nice way to wrap up my 2020 art career. This piece marks my 2nd year of digital art, having first ventured in December 2018 with the purchase of a Huion GT156HD that I no longer own; instead, this piece was done in Procreate on a 12.9" 2018 iPad Pro and finished in Photoshop.
I started this contest far too late, with only about 6 days to spare; I didn't realize it had existed until I accidentally peeked into the subreddit where people were posting their submissions. My centerpiece was Nian, an eastern-dragon inspired operator whose design is among my favorites in any game. Her in-game quotes in particular showcase her love of proper spicy cuisine, something I definitely resonate with.
Lungmen's a pretty chill place, but their cuisine? It's just got no kick to it! How can they eat that flavorless baby food? Listen up: spice is a way of life. Once you taste a little pleasant pain and feel that explosion of heat on your tongue, you'll realize just what you've been missing out on all this time.
I was torn between depicting more of the gameplay side of Arknights—fighting, violence, and war—but when I saw the entries that had already been submitted I felt like I wanted to do something on the opposite end. I ended up placing her where I figured she would spend her time best: behind the kitchen of Rhodes Island. The background was photobashed from several scenes of professional chefs on Youtube. One of the biggest things I realized here was how long it would actually take to both properly render out the background even with photobashing, and how long it would take to bring just a single character up to snuff. I went with a more painterly approach, though I did partial lining on the face to make it pop. This took 5 days, and I estimate probably close to 20 hours.
To render out the hair, I borrowed a lot of cues from the original E0/E1 art from the game. I kept mostly true to source, taking some liberties with my own style. It ended up looking a little messy though, and without proper lineart I ended up having to ad-lib a lot of the shading and detail afterward. In the future I'd like to ensure that the lineart for rendered characters is cleaned up before painting; this was a giant waste of time and I ended up redrawing the face twice.
I took a very loose, painterly approach to the piece: instead of defining the lines, I blocked out lights and shadows in grayscale, then used various gradient maps and photo filters in Photoshop to get the colors and lighting I wanted, before further painting the piece. I think the approach got me a relatively natural look, but it's still quite unrefined; I would like to keep working on this process in the future while avoiding pitfalls like the aforementioned redrawing issue.
In keeping with the theme of approaching the piece as a painter, I wanted to pick colors in the same way that many old masters have done. I went with cool lights and warm shadows to give the kitchen that sanitary, almost clinical tone, and priamrily lit Nian with an almost pastel cyan lighting. In the darker highlights, I shifted to green and purple hues, while in the midtones and shadows I trended towards purple and red.
I tried to maintain my values throughout the piece, but it's quite difficult to do so in color; I mostly tried to remember the chroma line for each fundamental color and adjusted using the color disc in Procreate. The only brush I used in the entire piece was the round brush, which meant spending quite a bit of time erasing or coloring over the original stroke to get it to taper properly. I also added a cyan and magenta highlight (set to Linear Dodge) which helped make Nian look a little more backlit and vibrant.
Overall, it was a good learning experience, and I got to experience quite a bit with colors and composition. I'll be working on the Punishing Gray Raven art contest next, and with over a month to work on a piece, I'll spend much more time planning out the composition and character, as well as the final rendering. This post-mortem serves mostly as a reminder to myself of my failings and what I can learn from them.
Also, just because I think they're fantastic, I'm reposting the 1st through 2nd art pieces. I'll definitely use these as reference for future compositions.
