"A Corpse That Loves You..."

"That is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you ...Why did you want to see me?... When my own father never saw me and when my mother, as not to see me, made me a present of my first mask!"

Well, I had to get this done with. For something that was only an experiment it sure did drag out. In the end I cropped Christine out, she was annoying me, really annoying me. When I got the urge to do a Phantom of the Opera drawing in the first place it was going to be a solo portrait of Erik anyway. And like I said, this is really just an experiment with ArtRage, Gradiant/Mask shading and Lineart.

All I really did was apply some texture and noise and use the curves tool to adjust colour and contrast.

Phantom and Christine: Part 5 (C's Hair and Rock Pillar)

Now that Erik has been fixed (not in the veterinary term, of course) Time to remove some line art or change it into a less obvious colour (like on the nose). Removing the line art worked best around the eyes, probably because the contrast was the best.

I wasn't sure how to do Christine's hair so I applied two gradient fills, a dark brown on Multiply filter and a warm orange on Screen filter. I then erased parts of the dark brown layer so only shadows remain and reveal the mid-tone again. The highlights was an outline done with the line-tool then filled in with the warm orange.

Now, its time that Christine stopped pawing the empty air. Looking on the Internet for cave walls I was drawn to the calcium formations that look both deformed and beautiful, suiting the theme of the story. Switching into ArtRage, which marvelously allows the layers to be kept, I built up the formation. It stills needs a bit of an adjustment so it isn't such a distraction and belongs within the setting.

Phantom and Christine: Part 4 ( Erik Render)

I wanted to experiment with this picture and try shading using the gradient fill tool and using masks. However this didn't give the best results and some places where to small for this approach.


Above is Erik with shadow and light on him, then increased by duplicating the layers. I must remember this is quite a dark setting and as Erik is in the background he'll be darker (out of the lime light) than Christine, who is more of a focus point.
I also forgot to draw in Erik's cape, that's what those things are on his shoulders, silly me! That's probably why that arm looked a bit dodgy.

Red Bull ... gives you wings... O' No She Didn't!

...Oh yes I did!

Well, wouldn't ya know! I had some time to do another sketch. Here is the Red Bull, the last of the character designs I'm doing for Beagle's The Last Unicorn. He has a bison-like mane, cracked horns and hooves and a big ol' manhood! It may sound perverse, but when I was a kid playing with little plastic cattle it was the under-bits that told me what was a bull, so the impression has stuck with me... yep, when I think of bulls I think of the genitals before the horns (as females can have horns just as big) ... Okayyy! Focus off from the vulgar bits.
In the book the Red Bull was described as blind, and in the movie his eyes were white so I suppose that could be taken as blindness. I, on the other hand, thought no point in the eyes being there at all, so got rid of them completely and replaced with some weird horns. The Red Bull is kind of a ghost/phantom it doesn't matter if its unpractical. Besides, he has whiskers! Blind rats can get along almost as normal just by using their whiskers, sensing air vibrations ect, so why not a huge bull?

I also loved his long whippy tail from the film. So I kept that.

"Butterfly, do you know who I am?"

"Why of course, you are a fish monger!"

God, I love that quote from the book (may not be exactly how I wrote it...but hey, don't be picky!)

So, this is my take on the/a Unicorn from Beagle's book, the Last Unicorn. I tried to incorporate some unexpected animals with the design, like a rabbit nose ('coz they make rabbits look so damn cute ^.^) and even a Great Dane muzzle (though it just looked stupid so it was scaled down a lot). My unicorn is also a bit more fluffed in the body, like a mountain goat (I think the book did reference goats for the unicorn's description). For me the thicker pelt adds a bit of wildness and age, based off true wild horses before the taming by man made almost every horse smooth and shiny.

" There has never been a time without Unicorns, we live forever. We are as old as the sky, old as the moon..." ~ Quote from the movie adaptation.

Phantom and Christine: Part 3 (Colour)

Time to start thinking about a palette. I want Christine and the Phantom to contrast in their colour tones, Christine being a warm reds and browns while Erik is cold greens and blues. 1. is the default palette and 2. is the same colours but having the background on a "Overlay" filter above it to get some darker hues.

Erik's arm (mainly the folds of the sleeve) is annoying me. It'll have to be fixed before I move on.

Phantom and Christine: Part 2 (Sketch and Line art)

Well, here is the sketch. Erik's hand had to be adjusted so it was more long than bulky, as described in the book, but other than that its ready for going digital. I want to try and do the background in ArtRage (which I have wrongly been calling ArtRANGE *shrugs and laughs*)

Oh! And the Panda-Leopard has been scrapped. I simply don't have the room or time for traditional art/painting and when you don't enjoy the prospect of doing it then its not worth doing.

*Later* And there's the background. It's so weird that it was done digitally! You can see brush strokes for wombat-sake! It was imported into photoshop and adjusted slightly so the hue was more warm browns/golds instead of green and the edges darkened.
I've also just started the line art, above a mid tone flat colour layer so I can see what I'm doing better. I probably won't use most the lines, so I'll erase where necessary depending on how it eventually turns out at the end.