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Monday, August 18, 2014

Nightmare of Nightmares


This is a digital painting I have done just recently. Probably took me ten hours to complete. The above image is NOT the full painting, but I will post the entire image below along with some close ups. Due to spoilers, I'm gonna use a "read more". Please take a look.




I went looking for a painting of this moment (and sent some very good HTTYD friends of mine to do the same). The turn out of our search was pretty poor... in fact there was only one image that did what I wanted and it was from a picture book. I was a little surprised none of the really, really talented artists in the fandom had decided to tackle it, so since I needed the image for a future blog post, I felt that I could go ahead and just try and do the painting myself. The result is what you see above. Ugh, this is such an awful, awful scene... but this post is about the painting. I'll get to the scene post soon. I should note that I painted this entire thing only listening to the songs Hiccup Confronts Drago, Meet Drago, and Demons by the group Imagine Dragons. They really helped me keep in the eerie, freaked out mood.


Here is a close up of Hiccup. It was very tricky for me to get the layout of the entire image. For one thing, I wasn't sure if I wanted to see Hiccup's or Toothless's expression. You could only really view one. I didn't want to do a 2D looking lateral shot, I needed it to me dramatic. In the end I chose to show Toothless... mostly because I put myself in Hiccup's shoes during this scene. I considered a first person shot, but then felt that this was best. Hiccup was hard to shade appropriately, but I think he looks good enough. 


Seriously, this is the one thing... the ONE THING in the HTTYD universe that SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. I know it is awful that Stoick was killed by Toothless, but what makes it so infinitely worse is that Toothless was shooting at Hiccup. He was stalking forwards with the heartless intent to snuff out the life of the boy who was his own best friend and soul mate. For five years Toothless has been undyingly faithful to Hiccup... and then this happens, and it is terrifying. The scene honestly made me sick the night after seeing it.

So, before I show you some more bits and bobs about the painting, I ought to point out that I was trying to use the same style Inhonoredglory did on one of her most terrifying paintings. It was a painting that she did that haunted me for... whew, probably a year. It is a mix between line art and digital painting. She seems to have mastered the style, so I actually went to her really scary image as inspiration to do mine. That was intentional because in the post I plan to do, I will compare and contrast the images. Her's is of a Skrill killing Hiccup in the most awful, slow kind of way, and mine is of Toothless turning on his best friend. Both are awful, and I really am glad that I was able to rub off some of her style because she is a much better artist than me. This is my version of her kind of painting, and I did it mostly because I had seen just how creepy this kind of style could be. So, thanks Glory!


So, here is just the line art. I kept it so anyone who wanted to could see the details without the color being obscured. If any of you can read my signature... it might be interesting.


And then I also have a 'version' of this without the line art. It would be an incomplete painting, so I'm really just showing this to you to let you see the shading beneath the lines. It looks kinda ghost-like and nightmarish, so after removing the lines, even though I didn't decide to polish this up, I felt I would keep it to show. 

Please keep an eye out for the post on this scene coming out soon. Also, any comments are appreciated. I'm sorry that this scene happened... and kinda sorry for capturing it, but the darker the night, the brighter the sunrise can be, and that is what HTTYD2 did. I've gone and given myself plenty of angst from this, so hopefully I'll dwell on happier subjects in the future.

Sigh... Toothless? Toothless?


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