Heya, well I'm new to these forums but I've been suscribed to the mag since christmas, hope I get as much help here as I do from that :).

Well this thread is basically going to follow the process of me concepting a piece for a client and then is going to end up with a recorded video of me drawing that piece. This is basically a project for college (the client is real however) so this is a huge learning experience for me and I hope to get as much feedback as possible, though, at the end of the day my client is the one who will be making some of the bigger descisions.

First off my brief is to digitally paint a piece that was inspired by a renaissance painting of George and the Dragon found here:

George and the Dragon

My client whilst inspired by this piece actually wants much more of a fantasy piece of an elven knight fighting a much bigger dragon. She's asked for the elven knight to be wearing ornate armour, riding an armoured horse and weilding an ornate sword. The dragon she wants to be elegant and deadly looking but unique.

With that said I started out doing a load of research etc. going to the zoo and visiting the Natural History Museum and I've come up with these thumbnails.

I circled my favourite design and decided to do a sketch to get an idea of what it could look like and also to show my client how I would want it to look.

the chosen design was the one circled and my client wanted to see some details and variations on the head, more spikes and horns and such.

A quick thumbnail to show how the creature could look mid-flight/pre-rip-your-face-off

Finally I finished the composition thumbnails, I don't have a favourite but there's something about 2 + 4 that really stand out to me.

 

Well this is where I'm up to so far, I'm waiting to hear my client's response and I'd really like to hear yours ^ ^. Next step is probably going to be  a couple more environment/compositional thumbnails to finalise the image then I'll work on some colour palatte thumbnails. So far I really think it'd benefit from a simple palatte, maybe just light sepia tones? I haven't done anything with "George" as I'll probably do his armour design as I go.

Right finished those thumbnails, these will be the last ones. Next is the colour palattes then onto the final image. I decided to leave  a paintover by Havoc-DM from over at CA.org as if I were to draw it out it'd look exactly the same anyway. I also tried a near miss scenario but it was much too cluttered and things blocked eachother out etc. so I think I came up with a nice alternative. It's between the first two for me I think.

This is looking absolutely fantastic so far. Keep it up

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http://www.artfulscruff.co.uk | deviantart
Playstation Network user ID: artful_scruff

Thank you :)

Okay the thumbnail has been chosen and now I'm working on colour, problem is I'm not great with colours and I can't seem to find the right ones. I really really need some help on this because I've got to get started on the actual piece by tomorrow otherwise I'm going to fall majorly behind.

Here's what I've got, I don't really like any of them so far but as I said, I'm bad with colours.

:S

ooh this is hard! and harder still to explain which one's i like!

my personal favourite is the second from the left at the top, but i'm also drawn to the unsaturated second from the bottom right, not much help?

nice thumbnails by the way!

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love the dragon design. I usually find dragon design to be very unoriginal, but you have found a really original one. For the color thumb, I like the fourth on the top (right side) best. Think the light is most natural in that one. Only  desaturate the blue on the ground, and you're good to go. Looking forward to the next posting.

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Life is contrast.

well I've had some big ol' problems with this, I was going for a similar colour scheme to the 4th on the top row but my computer couldn't handle the brushes I was using for the envirnoment at the resolution needed. So I spoke to my client, who fortunately had no problem with this and suggested I do the other thumbnail she liked which is number 2 on the version 2 thumbnails - luckily she was torn between the two anyway.

So I started that thumbnail and whilst the clouds are still taking 4x longer to render than they should, it's going much much faster and is going to be a much higher quality picture. Thanks for all the help on the colour thumbs anyway :).

I'll be posting regular process shots soon and by next week I should hopefully have the video sorted out and I'll put that up too.

I'd love to hear more crits during the next stage too :).

and here's the first part of the final image, working from the background in, the clouds aren't quite finished yet and they're a lil' too contrasted because of the smaller resolution. Remember this thing is about 20"x10" so the details are much more obvious.

It's great the way you're exploring loads of different options. Thanks for showing the process.
I agree with Geir about the original dragon design.
Look forward to seeing the finished piece.

Thanks for the lovely comments :) and no problem, I always find it easier to learn when I get to see the whole process of something, it helps you find your own way of working. I'm still learning all this stuff so I hope that it helps a bit more to watch someone going through the motions themselves :).

Here's another update before I go to bed.

This is going great, really really enjoyed seeing every step of your design process. I do adore your design, the Dragon look very unique as has already been mentioned twice. I assume that you're not gonna have  it belching fire, dont make it a fire fryer. it sure doesnt look like the sort to burn things, it has the fragrance of a turtle to it, it looks like snapper dragon. A Snapdragon? 

 kudo to you on your design there, its spectacular, it ceratinly fits the bill deadly, elegant and unique you could get alot of mileage out of a dragon concept like that, you should use it in a whole series of dragon pictures. The quick thumbnail even makes it look like a water creature. I like the dragon muchly, tis a shame that George has to hurt it

Anyway you really seem to have gone to town with all the varying layouts and approaches to the problem and i agree with the versions you have settled on.You going with number four then? he seems to have damsel in his arms in that one. How are you gonna show his ornate sword in that frame? In the colour varieties i would opt for the reddish one at the bottom right...(tut tut and theres me going on about no fire and yet i'm drawn to the firey tint.)

Hey do they have dragons at the Natural History museum now?

 

Excellent Like how this is heading, very impressed by your passion to the clients brief. Wanna see more.

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"Sleep... those little slices of death, oh how i loathe them!"

Inca:

Here's another update before I go to bed.

knight knight then.

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"Sleep... those little slices of death, oh how i loathe them!"

wow, a lot of great sketches in here and work throughs. looks like your really thinking this one through and each sketch I've seen so far looks really good.

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"Live life like a fantasy. Reality is only in your mind!" - Fabledgoat

Looking forward to see the vid. Where will you post it? And thanks for the extencive tumb posts. You are absolutly rigth. It does help alot to see every step of the process with other artists.

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Life is contrast.