Production
ULRIC
This was an idea I had for the male protagonist (Ulric) He's described as "big and burly.. but his muscle was all for show." Due to this description I imagined him as a large muscle man with a lot of muscle on show to make people feel inferior.
Below is the final sketches for Ulric, my friend didn't like the "Super buff" male body so I made him still muscular but a little smaller.
I much prefer this body type, however I think I'm going to change his hair, I want it longer and not as detailed and without the side of his head shaved as Bris has a shaved head first.
I decided to change his hairstyle so it didn't have an undercut. I much prefer this look. The hand on the left is drawn a bit dodgy but that can easily be fixed. Above is a video of how I did my shading for this project. It was 10 minutes long but I managed to shorten it after a lot of struggling. I tried doing it on AfterEffects but it wouldn't render correctly and the timing was all off so I had to try Premiere Pro (which I've never used before) which was actually really easy to use and I even managed to keep the last 11 seconds regular speed so you can see the difference of the blending vs without.
BRIS
On the left is the reference photo I found on Pinterest. From this I thought of the first chapter where Bris meets Ulric and decided to draw her in the clothes described in that scene: "shapeless" "hand wraps" "lowers her hood." This is only the first sketch and there might be changed in the body shape/ clothing but I don't think this is a bad attempt.
I decided to do a collection of drawings for a "Short Hair Bris" keeping with the same outfit as the original drawing of this character. I love how these turned out and had fun drawing these.
When talking to my friend about the characters personalities and how she envisioned them she mentioned how in the book Bris has tattoos but they're illegal in the Kingdom so she has to cover them up (which is why she wears the hooded cloak and baggy trousers.) So I drew this little concept of Bris with some of her tattoos on show (hense the change in outfit) and wanted to see what she would look like with her hair up and although it is cute, it doesn't fit this character in my eyes.
I chose those tattoos (knife with flowers, butterfly and dragon) as it reflects her personality; The knife and flowers as the first section I read about her made me think she looked sweet but could cut you, the butterfly as she's described as "slender and dainty... almost breakable" and finally the dragon as she seems like a very fierce character.
​
I did this drawing while waiting for my friend to message me back about the concept for Ulric as it might have taken a while.
I decided to make a digital version of my pencil drawing of Brie. I used muted tones as she doest seem like the kind of character to want the spotlight. Also the Kingdom she's in seems like commoners can only afford simple coloured clothing but the more power you have the more expensive/ colourful clothing you can afford. Above you can see what the drawing looks like without shading and what the shading looks like on its own. This year I decided to change the way I shaded my digital drawings so it looked more natural rather than blocky I used a different brush for the shading to see what the effect was, I really liked the outcome. I still need to finish the background and chair but unsure if I'm going to leave the background plain or make a scene. I'm probably not going to bother with the Background as I still have quite a bit of production to do and don't want to spend too much time on one drawing.
This is the final drawing for Bris in digital form. Im really happy with how she came out and love the shading i used for this drawing. Above is the final Colour palette, the larger circles are the base colour and the smaller is the colour used for shading. Although the shading doesn't look that visible in the picture it makes a massive difference when I take it off. When Ulric and Bris first meet, its in a pub so I thought I'd style the chair on something comfortable and based around a traditional British pub (red and oak.)