The elf is not even half finished and I’m planning on doing away with alien arms coming out of his head because originally the image was going to be apart of a bigger concept piece (you can see some of the other characters I was going to work on in the top sketch) but unfortunately as of the moment I do not have time to pursue this so the lone elf will have to do. I’m quite happy with the elf so far because it is the very first time I’ve tried digital painting and creating an image without the use of black/colour lines to hold the design together, my work is normally flat bright cartoons with no shadow or texture at all, example here:
The Elf was done in Photoshop Elements using a tablet. I worked from my original sketch which I first coloured in in flat base colours (you can see the body and hair is still presently in this cartoon looking state) and then I proceeded to shadow, light and colour in the details. I worked on seperate layers, duplicating the layer each time I wanted to add something new such as shadow or light. I left the original lineart in and just work up to them, eventually painting over the top of them and blending’em out as I get to’em. To help I took some photo’s of myself pulling the expression of the character to self as references for shadows and proportions of the face. It took a couple of hours to do, quite long really but because it was my first and so I took my time, anything I do next will probably be done in half the time.
If I’m happy with the final design I am planning on making a more in depth tutorial of my progress if it would be of any use to anyone else.
