Yacrical

This drawing was a massive pain in the backside. I needed to put in so much effort to get the golden shiny things just right. Reflections in and of itself are really difficult, even more so when the surfaces are curvy, and I must not obfuscate the actual shapes of the things despite them having a lot going on on their surfaces.

 

I find it interesting that whenever there are some cool looking humanoid robots in sci-fi in movies or games, for example, they’re always so militaristic in their appearance. I wanted to veer off the trope a bit and draw a type of wealthy, opulent, not-at-all military-related humanoid robot character.

 

The typical robot in sci-fi usually has very sharp-cornered or angular plating, and the appearance is functional and non-expressive. Deviating from this trend, I gave him very shiny and reflective, smooth and golden surface. The eyes are more expressive, and the clothing is expensive.

 

I’m not claiming that every humanoid robot in sci-fi is like that, but from what I’ve seen, it really do be like that. There are counterpoints, for instance Destiny 2’s Exos, who I was inspired by. I love the look of that race.

 

 

As a celebration for my 100th submission, I redrew my first (not actually first but essentially) proper digital drawing. I polled as to which one of my old drawings should I redo, and Fiery Knight won the plurality. I'm still using the same equipment today as I was in 2016 when I made the original one (Wacom Intuos pro M and Photoshop CC). Both dawings took up roughly a working week to omplete, and I put in similar effort. The difference is I'm far more diligent and have better working ethic and understanding than before. I have made some hefty changes to the overall design and arrangement, which I will explain and justify as well as I can.

The biggest one -- his pose. Originally, in 2016, I wanted him to leap towards the viewer ready smack them with his mace. However, I sucked worse than I do nowadays, so I wasn't able to convey that sort of motion that well. This time around I actually thought out his pose and hopefully achieved the feeling better now than I did in 2016.

Secondly: fire and lighting. Despite having named 'Fiery Knight', there wasn't really any fire in the original one. This is mainly due to my inability actually paint convincing fire. Now, however, I wanted to include some intense heat and sparks so as to make the 'Fiery Knight' actually fiery.

Thirdly, the lighting in the original one was quite nonsensical for the most part. Now I put in deliberate effort to have lighting that made actual sense. I settled for three sources of light: The fire, the cavern opening and some unknown point light behind the viewer (you can see the reflection on his helmet and shoulder and elbow pads etc). In the 2016 one, the lights were ambiguous and shone from directions that don't exist. I think I managed to rectify this issue.
I think this is quite an improvement, at least I am quite happy with it. Hopefully, though, in three years I'll look back to this and think how I could've made it better, because then I know I have improved.

What sort of dark magic might he be casting?