The Elder Scrolls Online poster challenge

Before we start here:
dear Zenimax - would you guys mind expanding your contests' audience? Please! So there'll be more and whole lot more motivated people taking part. Thanks in advance (:


Zenimax Online (with some help from Bethesda, I suppose) arranged the awesome challenge to make a poster for their upcoming mmo - the ESO. Some may already know Ima huge, Huge fan of the elder scrolls series - it's beyond any expression how much I adore the games, the universe,  ...the Contests.

I obviously am all excited about all this, but! the contest is not valid for people living in Russia. Sadly enough, no.

But when such things were of any significance for the creators with passion? Nevah, I tell you. So I started painting right away! And here is a glimpse on the process:

Initial idea for the piece generated without a peep.
Three single heroes from each alliance battling each other

with the white gold tower under the Molag Bal's siege in the background.              

A ~day later I sat down to paint furher.

On this stage I defined the poses to be a little more

expressive and have them help the composition somehow.

The idea with the Tamriel map shown itself here as well.

When working on the smaller details (just a bit of "lineart" for now)

and the lighting-color I've had some doubts concerning the center

figure - the orc - and tried a different pose.

"Too much symmetry".

In the process the canvas usually looks like this, yep.

Defining details. The painting process now, as all the lines

are pretty much done.

Adding some magic light on the argonian.

And the hands, yes

I've been capturing pics of my hands all the way through,

thanks to my younger brother Robert, who refused to

pose me for a couple shots.

So all the five (what?) hands on the piece are mine.
That's to be considered normal, though,

as the goblin and Cthulhu, for instance,  are no exception.

Argonian got some armour on and is finished in general,

so it's about time to

add some color!

And by the way - it's my first experience in a quite long time

painting Mainly with color.
Usually I add it in the last few dozen minutes.

So yes - practice! 

More detailz for the other combatants and some color as well

Painting khajiit.

Khajiit's ready. Some more work on the lighting and color.

Placing the map in place.

A bit of work on the fire is happening here too.

More fireworkz! Making the map more accurate.

With many more detailz have putted in, the piece is done

Souless Ones

It's on the dA too, for those interested - there you can grab the full-size copy.

Here's a glance on that too!

Some of this stuff may be not-so-visible, but sure as all the hellz, included on purpose.
Let's begin:

Each hero has certain things, that can tell a little about their allegiance to the respective faction
all based on the official map

Ebonheart Pact
Red markings on the argonian's skin (or is it "on scales" to be polite and correct?)

Daggerfall Covenant
The rugs on the orc's waist were blue enough before all the fire started, but now it's not as much visible.
But the metal thing on it still is pretty much does remind of the empire dragon logo in it's form.

Aldmeri Dominion
Again, not as much noticeable, but nonetheless - ornament on the khajiit's shirt is yellow.

Fiery lava at the feet of our heroes is an actual map of Tamriel.
There's Imperial City in the centre of the City island surrounded by the Rumare lake, burning in eerie blue fires. Elden Root, the "capital" of sorts in the province of Valenwood. And, just for a note, Whiterun in the middle of Skyrim tundra plains. Well, right between the orc's legz, actually.

The khajiit, being (as they should be) a sneaky-trycky, nasty, lousy bastard have his primary weapon dipped in poison - that's the reason it "glows" so and leaves a cloud of acrid fume on it's track for a while.
On his belts he has an elven knife, which also tells us he might be in good relations with some altmer.
The argonian isn't that plain and simple too - having a spell ready to strike the foe's face with, and a shiny blade in his other hand, he also have at least a couple throwing knifes always prepared.

What may be interesting about the brute orc? That's quite a question. He may not be as cunning as either of his opponents, but he's sharp and watchful enough - might be running towards the cat, but his eyes are turned on the lizard.

lol, how else would you show that?

And one more detail

Signing the artwork I've noticed it's of almost identically equal composition elements placement and color theme as my ~first elder scrolls digital piece - the Berne Deception. Weird!

Thanks for reading\scrolling through the pictures. Hopefully you find this any useful! Or entertaining. Or else.
Thanks anyway.

55th post!

H7Z website

 

A website project - university task from December 2012

The triangle in the top center is the main menu button - the activated variant is on the third picture. The pages are also done in the 4:3 resolution (same pictures - just a different aspect ratio and accordingly moved corner objects.

TRR

A brief story of my entry for the Tomb Raider Reborn contest,held by
deviantART, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics







It started, as always, from a few rough ideas which first came to mind

The right most (which is kind of a continuation of the idea from the left one) seemed interesting enough to go on with, so I've gone further with it











After trying a few variants I've chosen one to work with and started rendering

And even went on with the Lara's face and figure overall

As I was staring at the work more and more (yep, it's quite inevitable when working on something) it was becoming more and more boring, so I decided to, at least, change the environment
and had to start Lara over, as the pose changed a bit






Working on the new variant I've been checking the contest's gallery from time to time and eventually figured that the composition was obviously very much "generic" (relative to all the other works), so came up with a few more variants

Lara looking into a chest (the colored one) seemed interesting in concept, but not as interesting in it's composition. And as the time was running short I decided merging the other three sketches into one would be a better idea

The lighting variant on the left seemed more interesting (and justified), so chose that to work with.
Then tried adding additional elements - Lara's weapons

Bow\bow&pistol was the choice.

About time to start refining one of these.
Played a bit with the bow
(already chose the pistol - first one from the two above)

Thought a bit of whether it be better if the bow would be lying on the Lara, or be it hanging on the string

Weapons are all fine now - time to define a different part











And more different (pulled the straps off here, so it be easier to detail these parts)

Quite the same routine with all the rest and so the bw part of the work is completed.

Now it's the coloring and adding little decals like blood splatters

The work's almost done - time for some little tweaks and corrections like adding a bit of blur here and there, noise overall the picture, playing with colors and brightness-contrast and so on.

Thanks for your time, hope you like and enjoy this little "walkthrough" 

Full-size (3150x4357pixels) piece is here

uni doodlepaintingz

dpz I've done a couple weeks ago during a little "workshop" at the university (been mostly showing off the tablet and the casual work process).
~15 minutes each.

mercenariez

sketchez for a contest on the render.ru