Art Attack #183: Facing DOOM with Imperator?
Hey Steemit!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
We're continuing on with more free artwork redemptions from my viewers on Twitch; where viewers can use their channel points they've hoarded over the course of watching my streams to claim free art from me! I thought since I'm an artist this would be a good way to reward my loyal viewers, and also practise my art with different styles at the same time.
So this next artwork was redeemed by one of my close streamer friends who goes by Imperator_FPS on Twitch! His name used to be Goblin_FPS so I'm used to calling him Goblin now. This was his first time redeeming free art from me and since he's such a huge DOOM fan, he wanted me to recreate the original DOOM 1993 box art but in my art style, and with him as DOOM guy.
This is what the box art looks like:
He was also going to be using this as an offline screen on his Twitch channel so I had to use standard wallpaper dimensions for this (1920x1080px). I basically had to redraw the whole thing but change the word DOOM to IMPERATOR and draw his face as the DOOM guy instead. He did give me a reference to what kind of facial expression he wanted as well which helped. I also found a DOOM font generator to help me get the idea of what it would look like. So these were my references:
Since I just had to recreate the box art I thought I'd just trace the characters from this wallpaper I found. I wanted it to be as accurate as possible of course and I knew colouring was going to be a real hassle so tracing them would help with the initial steps.
So this was my sketch that I sent to Goblin and he said it looked amazing so I went ahead with the outlines.
I thought of outlining all the characters then figured it would be too much, and I wanted Goblin to be the focal point. So my plan was to give him a bold black outline while the demons he's fighting will be their usual red colour.
I wasn't really sure how I would colour the demons at first, so I tried to do an outline and fill first before adding in the details like all the shadows, veins and highlights using airbrushes. It actually came out surprisingly well!
It did take a while, but I was quite happy with how it came out and I think it looked as accurate as I could make it.
It was quite tiring to colour in each of the demons, but it looked good to me so it was worth it. I felt like a sense of achievement every time I finished a demon.
The next part I worked on was the hill in the foreground, and the demon approaching him holding something. I couldn't tell what it was from the box art so I deferred to Goblin for his expertise and he informed me it was a weapon so I tried my best to colour it as best as I could.
I can't even tell you how long each demon took to colour since it was quite exhausting, but I'm just so glad the airbrush strategy actually worked and enabled me to recreate it so accurately.
Once I reached this stage I thought I was mostly done with the demons so I was relieved, but then I realised the wallpaper I was referencing was missing a demon head right front and center compared to the box art. It looked like something was missing so I grit my teeth and included it as well.
Of course that meant more work colouring him but I think it looked so much better after I did. I think I had some trouble with this demon head in making him look as "realistic" as the others but I think he turned out alright.
After I was finally done with the demons it was a huge weight off my shoulders. The piece was more than halfway done. Next was Goblin himself!
For this I also used the same technique, having a base colour and adding plenty of airbrush strokes to create the shadows and highlights. I didn't really bother too much with his left leg (or right leg from our perspective) since the blast from the gun is supposed to be quite big and bright and would cover most of it.
So after adding in the blast and more details, this is what Goblin looks like in the suit!
The only thing left to do was the background, which I thought I'd just go with something simple. By this point I was quite exhausted from doing this piece and wanted it to be done.
I initially wanted to try drawing his name in the DOOM font, which is a whole other thing because of the details in that. So I gave up on that idea and just used the graphic that Goblin sent me done by another one of his artist friends that looks like this:
I wasn't exactly the same as the actual DOOM font but it was close enough. The only issue I had was it wasn't the same colour so I tried recolouring it to see if it would fit.
Lo and behold, it fit perfectly! I had to try a few different colours to see which one would look best and while it's not exactly the same as the actual DOOM font I thought this was close enough and still bright and attention grabbing even though it was in the mid-ground.
This was such a huge piece that I was so relieved to be done! I really wanted to do the logo properly but I also just wanted to move on to other redeems. If this was a paid commission I would've gladly put in the extra effort. But Goblin himself sent me the logo so I figured he was fine with it, and he loved the full piece in the end! He even set it as his profile picture on Twitch and Discord; I'm so honoured!
Anyway, here's the 30 second timelapse (the full thing is 19 minutes long!), sorry for the small screen but I had to adjust the resolution to make it a short.
https://youtube.com/shorts/iiotTqbTFXA?feature=share
If you're interested, I do draw on stream every Tuesday and you can even claim free artwork if you get enough channel points! We also play lots of interactive games so come hang out with us on my Twitch channel!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
