Step-by-step: Creating an armoured character

I start the image in black and white. By eliminating, I can concentrate on the design and make alterations where I need. Once I’m happy with the general design direction, I can inject some colour later. So, I use a textured brush to lay down some rough marks and begin thinking about my character. Remember, ask yourself questions to help figure out your character. I’m now at a point with my design where I’m happy to bring some colour to the image. Like anything with digital painting, there’s a number of different ways to do one job. To add some colour, I like to create new Layers at the top of my layer hierarchy, paint in some colour basic values and then experiment with the Layer Properties. This helps to create a basic colour scheme. I’m not happy with my design. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received about designing is this: don’t be precious about your work. Some people can get attached to an image of theirs, and even though they know it doesn’t work well, they don’t want to make any changes. Try to avoid this. Be flexible and be willing to make adjustments if you need to. That’s what I do here. Satisfied with my progress, I begin to increase my level of detail and add more tonal values to my design. I want the viewer’s eye to focus on the top half of my image, so I deliberately add more light to the top half of my character and darken the bottom half to create more contrast. I also add some fog and lighting effects to create a moody atmosphere in the woods.