Halfling Refugee is always used as a tank but the main purpose is to block attacks which always end up with him dying. So, for this week's art, I decided to do a fitting emote with Halfling Refugee as the main character. I would say he is pretty easy to draw since there's not a lot of minute details like last week's Octavia Shadowmeld but there's a few details still that slipped when I was doing it.
As an artist, when you're trying to do a fan art, you really need to dissect and understand each line to make a better recreation of it. For example, I didn't realize that the darker brown on the original Halfling Refugee's pants is actually part of the belt. I always thought it was just a shadowed part of the pants. These little details help you to make the art's color more complementing and not just blindly color picking the original art for their colors to be placed on your own.
Drawing Process
Lineart
This week's lineart is composed of three things, the main character, the gravestone, and the staff. It would be four if you include the ghost. I drew the body first, then add details little by little while trying to make sure I followed the main art as close as possible while still giving my own flair.
I had the gravestone drawn next. I want it to be like slightly dilapidated but not too much. I was thinking of adding more words like a normal gravestone but I wanted this to be suited for like Discord Emote style of drawing so I didn't. I actually think the gravestone should be larger and more exaggerated but it didn't look good on testing so I left it like this.
For the staff, I wanted a longer one. He is already a halfling and adding a longer staff looked cooler like he can use the staff as both his weapon and also as sort of a cane when he walks since he got the Weary debilitation. I also tried copying the details of both the staff and character as best as I could but this is the best I could do for now. I do still think I did more than I am expecting of myself so a little pat in the back for me for that.
Base Color
As usual, I used a combination of my own color palette and the color palette of the main art to do this. I really like the combinations of the skin for mine so I used that instead. I also used my white color palette for the bandages. The rest is just color picked from the main art.
My coloring process is a bit out of whack for this one so the gravestone's base color can be found within the shadow portion. I just used one layer since both the gravestone and the soil-ish, I want them to be on the same color. I thought of adding some plants or moss but it didn't looked good so I discarded it.
Base Shadow and Details
For the body, I used a 2-color scheme for the shadow. Just 1 color for the base and 1 color for the shadow. This looked really good based on my testing but I maybe should've used a darker brown for the shadow? I don't want it to be too dark so the shadow of the brown base is just a tad bit on the softer side.
When I had a mistake somewhere in the drawing and I realized it late, with Krita's animation, I have to go back to beginning to do it all per frame. So, what I started to do recently is if the change is not as bad, I would just do it in the final frame of the shadowing portion. If you zoom in very close, this includes the adding of the edge on the lines to make it smooth. It doesn't show if you look at it as a whole but if you zoom in a little closer, you would see the difference.
Sometimes, this also includes adding a few lines here and there but like I said, if it's not very obvious, I just do a shortcut and do it in the last frame but if it's obvious, I redo it from the first frame even if I am on the shadowing portion of my work.
Staff and Ghost Base Color and Shadows
I wasn't convinced on the two-color scheme for the staff so I did three colors on it creating accidental highlights. The gem on the top of the staff looked really bland with just the main color and the shadow and if I do a darker one without the lighter shadow, the cotrast doesn't look right. This compelled me to use three colors.
I was actually thinking of doing five colors to create some sort of gradient overlay but then everything would look weird because the body is in a two-color scheme and the staff would be too 3D-ish which breaks the balance. Another problem is that this is a chibi-style and not realism so I don't want to add realistic shadowing style such as the 5-color scheme just to make the staff look cooler like in the original pic. In the original art, the gem and shadows are using gradients and I want to keep the cartoon-ish effect since this is Chibi-style so I settled on the 2-color scheme for the body and 3-color scheme on the staff
Gravestone Shadow
I also used 3-color scheme on the graveyard because of the same reason. I could've done 2 colors only but since the gravestone is huge, it would be too obvious and out of place. The 3-color scheme though looked cool so I didn't add more. It somewhat reminds me of how they gradient in Minecraft which is a plus.
Full Timelapse
Original Art
Hi, y'all. Slimey here, your jolly and gullible little blue slime. I got reincarnated to this world to better my art and join community challenges to get more practice and improve my skill.
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Images are taken from Splinterlands, Drawn in Krita, Animated in Photoshop and Edited in Canva.