Eren's Assault
Eren's Assault is an artwork based on the series Attack on Titan. This artwork focuses on dynamic posing for the character, as well as playing around with the anime and manga art style.
Attack on Titan's manga have more details from its line shading, while the anime has a lesser details and a warmer colors. The shading in anime also has visible lines where you can see where the shade darkens.
REFERENCES
The characters in the reference have shadings that are not blended smoothly together, rather, have clear lines at shaded areas. Areas where it is bright have flat colors, which creates an illusion of highlighting the characters in conjunction to the shading.
Being used to shading in a realistic art style, learning to force myself to shade very differently helps me to expand what I can draw.
The objects in the manga reference have these lines that shade some areas. This kind of shading is known as cross-hatching. The manga reference has cross-hatching added on top of already shaded areas, which help to create more definition as well as a sense of movement to the objects.
The video teaches about creating dynamic poses using a circular motion when sketching to slowly sketch it out. With circular motions, it prevent the pose from looking to stiff, at the same time, makes it easier to put out the movement from the dynamic pose you are thinking of.
Looking at the past 2 artworks, both had static poses and looked stiff. With dynamic poses, more personality can be given to the characters and helps the artwork to look more lively.
SKETCHING EREN
The first sketch was done in a circular motion just as mentioned from the reference video from Sycra. It portrayed the intended motion well, but needed refinement.
The second sketch has a more angular shape to create movement that looks like it has more force. It also fixed some proportion issues.
The final sketch input the look of Eren's titan and also fixes some minor issues.
SKETCHING THE BACKGROUND
The first sketch draws out the warhammer spikes, and the rest draws out smoke effects, falling debris and background buildings. These items give more life to the drawing by making them interact with one another.
FINAL SKETCH
With the character's dynamic pose combined with the environment as well as other effects, the sketch definitely looks more lively compared to the previous 2 artworks.
Although it looks messy, due to having more layers, it was easier to separate and color the respective parts later.
LINING AND COLORING EREN
A clean lining from the sketch, with no parts from other layers.
Base colors were applied first, followed by multiple layers of shading that gave more depth. Lastly, the eye was colored to complete the coloring of Eren.
Eren is colored in a manga style for emphasis. The crosshatching on Eren gives it more definition and a unique look to stand out from the background.
This entire process made use of layers in Photoshop more than the previous 2 artworks, and proved to be of tremendous help as I was able to edit the areas I needed to by going to its specific layer without affecting other parts of the character.
This ended up providing a much more organised workflow, as it also applies to the coloring in other parts of this artwork as well.
COLOURING THE REST OF THE ARTWORK
These 3 parts only show the final product from each group. Each group had many layers similar to when coloring Eren.
The warhammer spikes are colored in a similiar fashion to Eren, as these were the objects I wanted to stand out. With the smokes, debris and background buildings having a different style of coloring, it contrasts with the warhammer spikes and Eren.
BACKGROUND
With the main focus on the objects and not the background, there was no need for a super flashy background. There is still a need for the background to fit in, hence having the official Attack on Titan logo in the background with a few blood splatters compliments and brings the entire artwork together.
FINAL TOUCHES
While looking back at my monitor to check out how my artwork looks compared to the tablet's screen, I realized that the colors do no fit as well as they do on the tablet's screen compared to the monitor. The tablet's screen is an IPS monitor with a more color accurate panel, while the monitor has a standard screen.
Most people do not own IPS screens, and usually colors that look good on non IPS screens look great on IPS screens. It is not usually the case the other way round. Thus, with that in mind, a filter can easily solve this issue and create a more pleasing look. I ended up with the Aden filter on Instagram to create a more warm color scheme, which benefited the final work greatly.
It now looks more natural and pleasing to the eye.
THINGS TO TAKE AWAY
Avoid using straight line when doing dynamic poses, try to use a more rounded motion when sketching instead.
Taking a look at the difference between and IPS panel and a non IPS panel helps me to understand what most people will see.
Filters are helpful to make any color adjustments.