52 Duke Alloces

[kalpo]

He's actually heavily badass material, I wonder why he hasn't been picked yet. To boil it down, he's this space lionknight on his dragon horse. He also brings 3 familiars. I'm not an expert, but that's an euphemism for sexy demon girls, right? Anyway.

[kalpo]

Started working on a basic composition. The first two are this headless horseman stance with focus on an intimidating look. The third one focuses on being summoned from above (since he teaches about the skies and astronomy, I thought it would be nice to make him appear from the sky). Still have to work on his lion face. A bit undecided right now in what direction to take it.

[geckzilla]

I like the unique look of C. They're all nice compositions, though.

[darkreaver]

I'll echo geckzilla, I rather like composition C on originality. Although, I don't really like the symmetric ellipse above and ellipse below setup...i'd shift the horizon either up or down to make the shapes different. Or maybe shift the camera angle so that only one of the two circles are visible.

what's horologium? is that a reference to the constellation?

also where are the sexy demons you promised?

[kalpo]

Thanks guys. I'll probably go with that one.

DR, I started off lightly. I don't want to cramp the composition more than is needed. Although it may work with cards. I'd love it if I could include some hot chicks, but at the same time it seems a bit of a cheap move in this particular context, so I'll see how things develop.

Yeah I'll probably shift the horizon. I'm just really getting used to drawing horses (and people on horses -it's tricky, their position can ruin the character).

A horologium is basically a badass astronomical clock (you know, all the astronomy teaching stuff about Alloces):


Browsed through a volume on history of art. Now I've got so many impressions and directions I want to take this that I can't decide. I hope I'll find the right balance. I'd still like to stick to my usual high saturation style, but at the same time I think that a more realistic approach would look good. Not to mention that copying the medieval interpretations here and there would give it this interesting eerie look. Some of the early Christian badassery is just beautiful.
Like this Scythian one:

It makes me want to shed all realism and do one of these organic compact things for once.

Not to mention Irish South Park Jesus.

[darkreaver]

eh, I was mostly joking about the demon chicks. mostly. truthfully, the composition already looks a little cramped. it may be necessary to add in some more open space into the composition.

i will have to agree, that clock does look pretty badass.

also fuck yeah ancient central asian peoples =D pretty sure scythians were not christian though. i've been looking through refs of scythian/turkish/mongol costume and art recently myself

[kalpo]

They weren't, but the artistic approaches are applicable.

[kalpo]

where's my afternoon?

[akida]

I really like the way you work your lines in shapes, especially that bottom horse thing

Is the latest the final? Perhaps you could work with colors more, the tones in themselves work great but the color values take something away from the focus, perhaps cooling down the "horse" to a simple grey will do the trick, as almost everything right now is warm. Also, the title is a bit too close to the border.

[kalpo]

I don't think it's final, I came to realize that it's horrible. Tried to do some foxes a few weeks ago but failed. Maybe I'll do another one from scratch.