Just A Fangirl

The Art and Random Musings of Louvette Solidum-Escuadro

Posts tagged my art

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“Indelible” Not much to say here, it’s just another render of my Cullen model but this time he’s got a tattoo of the templar crest.  If you’re familiar with my work then my inclusion of tattoos should come as no surprise XD  The title of the piece not only refers to the indelibility of the tattoo but also of his templar training.  Which is kind of deep considering this is essentially a gratuitous shirtless Cullen pic but there you have it :P

“Indelible”

Not much to say here, it’s just another render of my Cullen model but this time he’s got a tattoo of the templar crest.  If you’re familiar with my work then my inclusion of tattoos should come as no surprise XD  The title of the piece not only refers to the indelibility of the tattoo but also of his templar training.  Which is kind of deep considering this is essentially a gratuitous shirtless Cullen pic but there you have it :P

Filed under cullen dragon age dragon age 2 my art louvette 3d art bioware

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“Contemplate” (fan art of Cullen from the Dragon Age games) I’m posting this again because I didn’t really give any explanation regarding the piece, and I know a few people are interested to find out more about the art decisions when I made it. Ordinarily when I make a character portrait I let a bit of their personality show but in this case I didn’t know much about Cullen.  What I do know was that despite his horrible experience in Origins at the hands of Uldred he became a matured, reasonable man in DA2 especially towards the end.  I can really imagine him spending a lot of time thinking about all these mages and templar issues, particularly at the time when he starts sensing that something’s not quite right with Meredith. The look of this piece was inspired by one of my favourite B&W photographs, “The Devout” by Edwin Martinez.  I wanted to portray Cullen alone with his thoughts, the templar banner in the background together with his body language and facial expression hinting at the solemnity of his contemplations as well as the burden of his duties.  This idea is also communicated with the way I lighted the scene - the dramatic play of light and shadow only reinforces the seriousness of his thoughts; it wouldn’t have had the same vibe if I used a soft box, I think it would’ve lessened the emotional impact.  Doing this piece in B&W was a no-brainer for me as well, colour would’ve distracted the viewers and I wanted them to focus on what he might be thinking about. Well that’s what I was aiming for, at least.  As always I leave the interpretation to the viewers. :)

“Contemplate” (fan art of Cullen from the Dragon Age games)

I’m posting this again because I didn’t really give any explanation regarding the piece, and I know a few people are interested to find out more about the art decisions when I made it.

Ordinarily when I make a character portrait I let a bit of their personality show but in this case I didn’t know much about Cullen.  What I do know was that despite his horrible experience in Origins at the hands of Uldred he became a matured, reasonable man in DA2 especially towards the end.  I can really imagine him spending a lot of time thinking about all these mages and templar issues, particularly at the time when he starts sensing that something’s not quite right with Meredith.

The look of this piece was inspired by one of my favourite B&W photographs, “The Devout” by Edwin Martinez.  I wanted to portray Cullen alone with his thoughts, the templar banner in the background together with his body language and facial expression hinting at the solemnity of his contemplations as well as the burden of his duties.  This idea is also communicated with the way I lighted the scene - the dramatic play of light and shadow only reinforces the seriousness of his thoughts; it wouldn’t have had the same vibe if I used a soft box, I think it would’ve lessened the emotional impact.  Doing this piece in B&W was a no-brainer for me as well, colour would’ve distracted the viewers and I wanted them to focus on what he might be thinking about.

Well that’s what I was aiming for, at least.  As always I leave the interpretation to the viewers. :)

Filed under cullen dragon age dragon age 2 bioware louvette my art

23 notes

For this year’s Dragon Age Holiday Cheer, my Secret Santa gift is for Kayayatao.  I was thrilled to find out that she’s a fellow Zevran fan! And good thing too because my existing Zevran model once again gets to be rendered after a long time of being away from the spotlight, so to speak.   To create his portrait a bit differently this time around I decided to use a gobo.  In real life a gobo (short for “Go Between”) is a template you place in front of a light source to create interesting shadows, patterns and/or colours.  In a 3D software one of the more efficient ways you can achieve this is by applying a texture map to your light source.  Of course another way of doing this is placing actual objects in front of the light (like what I did with this really old render using DAZ3D’s Troll model, I placed prison bars in front of the light to create that shadow) , however putting more polygons into the scene will add to your render time so you need to be smart about it and consider the alternative of adding a texture map to your light instead. To create this particular shadow effect with Zevran’s portrait I used an existing B&W image as my light’s texture (It’s actually one of ZBrush’s alpha images heh) for the spotlight.  Now ordinarily I’m not a big fan of using spotlights as my main light for my portraits - I prefer using softboxes - only because spotlights cast harsh shadows (unless of course I was intentionally after creating a harsh look in the first place).  Unfortunately you can’t get this kind of shadow effect using a softbox so I had to use a spotlight instead.  Anyway I had fun creating this and think I’ll be creating more renders with interesting shadow patterns in them.  This is going to be fun :)   Happy Holidays Kayla and hope Zevran will keep you warm ;)

For this year’s Dragon Age Holiday Cheer, my Secret Santa gift is for Kayayatao.  I was thrilled to find out that she’s a fellow Zevran fan! And good thing too because my existing Zevran model once again gets to be rendered after a long time of being away from the spotlight, so to speak.  

To create his portrait a bit differently this time around I decided to use a gobo.  In real life a gobo (short for “Go Between”) is a template you place in front of a light source to create interesting shadows, patterns and/or colours.  In a 3D software one of the more efficient ways you can achieve this is by applying a texture map to your light source.  Of course another way of doing this is placing actual objects in front of the light (like what I did with this really old render using DAZ3D’s Troll model, I placed prison bars in front of the light to create that shadow) , however putting more polygons into the scene will add to your render time so you need to be smart about it and consider the alternative of adding a texture map to your light instead.

To create this particular shadow effect with Zevran’s portrait I used an existing B&W image as my light’s texture (It’s actually one of ZBrush’s alpha images heh) for the spotlight.  Now ordinarily I’m not a big fan of using spotlights as my main light for my portraits - I prefer using softboxes - only because spotlights cast harsh shadows (unless of course I was intentionally after creating a harsh look in the first place).  Unfortunately you can’t get this kind of shadow effect using a softbox so I had to use a spotlight instead. 

Anyway I had fun creating this and think I’ll be creating more renders with interesting shadow patterns in them.  This is going to be fun :)  

Happy Holidays Kayla and hope Zevran will keep you warm ;)

Filed under dragonageholidaycheer kayayatao my art dragon age zevran

42 notes

For the Mass Effect Holiday Cheer, my gift was for StellarSparrow.  Her favourite character from Mass Effect is Samantha Traynor so I decided to create an artwork of her. But before I continue I suggest you guys check out StellarSparrow’s art gallery in Deviant Art - it’s full of beautiful paintings, very inspiring! She’s already made several Samantha Traynor-related pieces so as you might imagine I got a bit intimidated creating my own version of the character - Stellarsparrow’s done it so well ;) For this Samantha fanart I created a simple pin-up of her.  But even if it’s just a pin-up the portrayal of Samantha should be consistent with her character - she’s smart, charming and at times innocent so I wanted those qualities in this piece.  I hope I’ve accomplished that.  Also the whole scene should reflect her personality hence the bright background (which is a warm off-white colour, I didn’t want it to be sterile-white) and radiant lighting (I specifically chose a large softbox for the lighting to soften the shadows). Since Samantha likes chess there’s a large Queen piece in the foreground.  That particular piece was intended as a message that Samantha’s the Queen of Chess :-P The piece is black so it could stand out as a separate element from the predominant white background. To be honest I wanted more time to refine my Samantha model but I was concerned that my gift might not make it in time for Christmas; I’m almost nine months pregnant and the baby is due to arrive soon.  I’ve done the best I could though and very happy this was completed early.  I hope Stellarsparrow likes it :)

For the Mass Effect Holiday Cheer, my gift was for StellarSparrow.  Her favourite character from Mass Effect is Samantha Traynor so I decided to create an artwork of her.

But before I continue I suggest you guys check out StellarSparrow’s art gallery in Deviant Art - it’s full of beautiful paintings, very inspiring!

She’s already made several Samantha Traynor-related pieces so as you might imagine I got a bit intimidated creating my own version of the character - Stellarsparrow’s done it so well ;)

For this Samantha fanart I created a simple pin-up of her.  But even if it’s just a pin-up the portrayal of Samantha should be consistent with her character - she’s smart, charming and at times innocent so I wanted those qualities in this piece.  I hope I’ve accomplished that.  Also the whole scene should reflect her personality hence the bright background (which is a warm off-white colour, I didn’t want it to be sterile-white) and radiant lighting (I specifically chose a large softbox for the lighting to soften the shadows).

Since Samantha likes chess there’s a large Queen piece in the foreground.  That particular piece was intended as a message that Samantha’s the Queen of Chess :-P The piece is black so it could stand out as a separate element from the predominant white background.

To be honest I wanted more time to refine my Samantha model but I was concerned that my gift might not make it in time for Christmas; I’m almost nine months pregnant and the baby is due to arrive soon.  I’ve done the best I could though and very happy this was completed early.  I hope Stellarsparrow likes it :)

Filed under stellarsparrow samantha traynor art my art mass effect holiday cheer holiday harbinger