Jan 31, 20232 min read

January Behind the scenes

January brought forth a lot of new challenges, some that I knew I would have to face, and others totally unforeseen. I had known for a while that I had wanted to take on a project like this, but I didn't know in what fashion. deciding that I would make a piece styled around key art was difficult, I did didn't even think I could do it. Previously when I had attempted something of this scale it took me about a month and a half to illustrate a fan art piece for Un Diable Dans La Poche, a short film by a graduate from the Gobelins school in Paris. What this means is that I was already given a direction, setting, and character for that piece. I had to learn what it meant to frame a character, render materials, and try to step away from rendering at some points so that the character read better as a whole. So for January after coming up with my own concepts and story surrounding the character, all I had left was two weeks.

The story surrounding January in the World between rifts is that of a being that reincarnates and can start the lives of creatures, but in her perspective because she has lived so long, to her they slowly die behind her. When writing the story I did not want to reveal everything, so I tried to only echo how powerful she was in the narrative that comes along with her illustration. The design of her having this power comes from being the start of the year, so I put the characteristic in her hands. the corruption on her legs represents the death that will follow closely behind her. One of the more preferable changes in her outfit was that it changed from gold and silk to shined bronze and worn leather. This was supposed to add to the state of depression she is always engulfed in. Another design choice that stood out was that usually in these high fantasy illustrations the clothes are ornately rimmed with gold or some type of lining to enhance character silhouette and readability, so it felt innovative to line them with ropes and braids instead of the usual flashy stuff.

To the left is the first "green light" for the final, sadly a lot of things changed, something I hope doesn't continue to happen as much in the future. With some guidance about night time scenes I was given a paint over, and in it the painter mentioned that in the night time scenes generally nothing is brighter than the moon and

that the second light source should not compete with the brightest one. In all of these styled illustrations I saw after I also saw that it was super common to place the moon close to the head, something I didn't notice before.

this was the image scaled up and painted over, there were a lot of things I grew attached to and could not keep due to the nature of the illustration. one of them being the hand and the supporting leg.