Sleepy Companions

I painted the line art I posted earlier. It posed a lot of fun and interesting challenges, so if you would like to see it as well as some close ups, click the "read more". I hope you'll like it... I admit it is a little different than most HTTYD fan arts. Man, I've got some other ideas up my sleeve, but I don't know if I'll get the time to do them.

Here is the finished painting! I did shell shading (mostly) again this time, and it turned out looking sort of exotic! I'll put some close ups and some commentary bellow.

Here is Hiccup and Toothless's gear. It was fun trying to draw it laid out on the ground instead of on the characters... though it did mean I had to do some guessing on what Hiccup's outfit might look like beneath the armor. With all those belts and buckles, I imagine it would be very uncomfortable to sleep in (especially compared to Toothless's side. Boy, I'd love to sit where Hiccup is in this picture). Anyway, since it is a night scene I had to go very dark on the equipment colors... and I still was probably not brave enough with the colors; I should have made the contrast between dark and light even more stark). So, there is the HTTYD duo's famous and complex apparel.

Probably one of the funnest things about actually painting this was doing the glow off of Midna's hair and body markings. I didn't really plan to do this, but when I looked at her in game, I noticed that if she was in a completely dark area, her hair and body marking shone pretty brightly. After that I decided to kind of have pale orange light dancing off of all the objects that were close to her. She's the only member of the party who hasn't fallen asleep yet, but she is yawning. The glow affect on her hair was just such a new technique for me... I'm actually really pleased at how it makes the whole scene look, especially the way it kind of reflects all along Toothless's neck and the top of his head. This is the kind of stuff I never expect to do! I mean, who would think I'd wind up shading Toothless orange because of glowing hair? Oh, and by the way, Midna is way better than Rapunzel from Tangled (sorry to those of you who are "Big Four" fans...). Her hair was glowing around five years before Tangled was released, and while Rapunzel can use her's to grab stuff, Midna can actually make a massive hand out of it. So, yeah, in the super-hair contest, Midna is cooler... Though she does look a little bizarre without her helmet on.

I enjoyed coloring Link's iconic equipment. Doing the faint night light on it was fun, and I just think all the little tiny bits that shine in the blue light look rather cool. This is an extremely cool and iconic blade, so I wanted to try and do it justice with the color and lighting.

So, here is the scene with the light dancing off of Toothless's head, Hiccup's cheek, and Link's shoes. I really am happy with that effect. I'm not a good colorist, I really am not. I can do fairly anatomically correct line arts with little details like scales, spines, teeth, hair, or feathers... but when it comes to coloring a scene my lighting is usually pretty bland. I came at this image thinking that coloring it would be simple and that it wouldn't improve it all that much, but then I discovered just how pretty lighting could be, and I also discovered how much it can be used to focus the viewers' eyes and draw them in so that they look all around to try and see where that glow is touching. I like it. It wasn't easy though! I had a hard time believing that my skin tones in this lighting would look green in the shadows, but in the end I think it all worked out ok. I hope you like it. I don't know when I'll do another digital painting or even what the subject will be. Thanks for looking.