I tend to shift my focus around to different things but one that always tends to draw me back with my digital artwork is light. Of course its the root of anything visual, but I really enjoy the focus of doing different things with light.
This particular scene might be a little different than most, in that I spent very little time on the subject and extraordinary amount of time playing with the light. In the process I allowed the character and the scene to be effected by the light rather than the other way around setting the light to highlight the character.
Whether or not that ends up producing a flattering image of the character was in this case secondary to my goal, which is really about learning the craft.
I think that artist tend to gravitate to their own style, mine is certainly headed in the direction of realism. That doesn’t mean that I always strive for images to look like photographs, there is always some form of fantasy involved. Rather than getting caught up doing another NVIATWAS (naked Vicky in a temple with a sword), I enjoy the opportunity to make other actors in the scene the star.
The funny thing is where I used to be able to knock out full animations in a few hours, I seem to be getting slower, this one took almost three weeks of effort. And the results of that effort:
Click on the image to see a full size view.