Here are some of process snapshots of this piece of Astarion in Baldur's Gate.
I am a messy painter and I often adjust and change the designs as I paint. (Mostly because I don't have the patience to do proper line art haha)
I start out with a rough sketch, I usually sketch ideas out on my ipad and move to my cintiq to work with colors.
Next I block in rough color thumbnail. I keep this part messy as I just want to figure out the value structure and the overall mood.
At this point, I have collected a myriad of screenshots and reference images from the game, pinterest, and also from artists work that inspires me.
With the references on one screen, I start to paint the details, I work from foreground to midground to background. (Sometimes I'll bounce between the depth when I get bored from painting one thing for too long)
Sometimes after I block in the colors I'll make adjustments. I didn't like how warped the perspective was getting on the building on the screen right side, so I adjusted the vanishing point and added more tiers to the design. I went back into the game and looked at more how the stairs were designed and figured it out more thoroughly with a sketch on on top.
I think sitting down and doing the details is the most time consuming part. I still want the focus to be on the character despite all the detail going on the background. At this point I'm toggling on black & white filters constantly to check the value, grouping everything in the background together, making sure the lighting frames the subject in focus. At this point I realized, I forgot to paint Astarion's hair LOL, and that the bg was getting a bit too detailed, so I used a more textured brush and painted away some of the edge details of bg buildings.
Last, I make final adjustments, and I make a overall lighting/fx adjustment folder. Adding in some noise, adjusting the contrast, color balance, and lighting over all and call it done!
𝗟𝗼𝗿𝗲: Built to withstand the energy currents emitted throughout an Aether Ring that would be harmful to an uninitiated human being, Solace has served as the on-site emergency medbot since the Spire’s construction.
𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆: In the beginning, the visionary engineers and technicians that worked at the Spire had a simple goal to create an automaton capable of responding to medical emergencies with on-site immediacy.
Thus, Solace, the first ever medic automaton was built. Solace’s only function, in the rare occasions that called for it, was to bring back a duelist from the brink of death by injecting them with a healing fluid mixed with their appropriate aetheric element. Any remaining medical procedures would occur subsequent to the Aethermancer being carried off the Ring.
Over the years, a multitude of refinements and upgrades have been implemented upon the base model, most remarkably of which was the hologlass projector. The projector allowed for a holographic display of the doctor who is currently hosting the automaton, providing a much stronger human connection to the potentially injured or traumatized patient in need.
While newer medbot models created for many the emerging Rings around the world possess varying features and presentation, they all essentially replicate the base functionality and design of Solace as the first prototype.
Here are some process shots for this one of Raphael from BG3! That magnificent bastard...
So I started out with a sketch of Raphael. He's got such a charismatic swagger doing the whole "What's better than the Devil you don't know? The devil you do" scene. I just wanted to do a caricature study and have a bit of fun.
Moving from rough sketch to clean line art is always challenging for me as I often get bored or what was originally loose and fun can become stiff.
I had to redo the linework twice because I didn't like how the first one turned out! Second time is always the charm.
I initially only planned to draw the character but I love the design of House of Hope too much, so I went back into the game and took a bunch of screen shots and sketched out the rough bg.
Then I went ahead and cleaned up the bg. At this point is when I group the layers properly, so there is a clear separation between foreground, and background as well setting up the layers for animation. (Making sure the fireplace guards overlaps the walls behind it.)
At the next stage I adding in the flat colors. I wanted to keep the style treatment of this piece more on the cell shaded/cartoony instead of super painterly. So I keep the color treatment fairly flat with a small amount of texture with the intention to add lighting as a fx overlapping treatment instead of painted in.
I work on the characters and the bgs at the same time to keep the values and color temp consistant, constantly adjusting as I go. From habit from work, I always paint the entire BG JUST incase I need to make changes or make adjustments to subject in from. Here is the bg all done, with fire painted in as a place holder.
And finally, adding the final lighting layers added on Raphael. I keep it simple here, just a redish/purple multiply player with the areas in the light masked out, and inverse mask on an orange/red overlay layer of the areas in the light.
Animating the fire took ironically the longest, the animation tools in photoshop is clunky and I haven't animated since school days. I looked up a lot of references and tutorials! It's not perfect but good enough for me!