August, 2002 -- The Commission -- Scorpiens possess a thick, chitinous carapace that serves as
excellent
body armor, but prevents them from wearing similar man made
protection.
They also have a long, powerful tail that ends in a sharp hook
which they
use to strike painful blows upon enemies while in battle.
We'd like for the scorpiens to have a sleek and deadly look.
Here are a few concept sketches...I'm mainly trying to pin down the face right now. Pick out what you like
and I'll move more that direction. He really likes the face on #4, and he
absolutely loves the body on scorpien2.jpg.
He is wondering if you
can make the top of the head a little more spiny like a cross
between #3 and #2 but keep the face style of #4. He doesn't
actually want the horns, but he likes the spiny crest on #2 and #3.
| Here's a version of the carapace. I imagine them using fairly small weapons, arm-blades or the like, in order to make best use of their tail in combat.
I love the muscles showing on the carapace. It looks great. The
scorpiens only use their tails in combat very rarely because there
isn't actaully a poison sac anymore. (The mages who created them
took those out somehow.) They actually tend to fight with swords:
a longsword or a scimitar usually.
| Here's a head that's a combination
of the ones you liked. And here's the basic pose I have in mind...something from the side
so the tail is visible.
| This is the pose I'd like to go ahead with. It's not
as much of a profile as I had originally planned, but I decided it would be better to have an emphasis on
the musculature of the carapace. I haven't decided on whether to have him holding a weapon yet.
"That looks great so far. I love the pose and the exoskeleton. I think
we were talking about curved blades as weapons, right? Something
slightly exotic looking would probably be cool.
As for the color, I think that a earthy tones would be good. Black,
brown, reds.. whatever you think is best."
| Here is the pic done in
black and white. It's scanned in and ready to colour.
| I've layed down the basic
colours, using a multiply layer so the pencil still shows through.
The next step is to add some variation and highlights.
| Here's what it looks like after
working the colours for a bit, minus the pencilwork. I'm going to add a bit more
colour to rough it up a bit, but really only the texturing and background is left.
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Click to see the final version |
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