Hey y'all! Today I've got an animated Lux Vega fan art for Splinterlands Art Contest Week 254. It is also my first time entering this art contest. I don't really play Splinterlands but I've been told by an acquaintance to give the contest a try so here I am.
As I was browsing through the splintercards, I saw many cool characters that I want to draw but I have to pick one for now. What stood out the most for me is Lux Vega. It is probably because I see a Harley Quinn vibes off of her and I love Harley Quinn. I just love mysterious women, don't you?
The process below is the general summary of my work but I actually did it the harder way which is coloring per part. Reason is to lessen my work load because I will be animating it later on, which is not part of my plan but someone mentioned it so why not give it a try. I was trying to do a 3d look at first but I'm not used to coloring that way so this is fine for now :>
Illustration:
Sketch
This sketch is composed of 2 layers, the blue sketch and the red sketch which is what I usually do now. I usually use Pencil - Real pencil for my sketches so it wont be heavy to look at. You can clearly see that the two sketches doesn't match. The blue sketch was the general idea but as we go to the red sketch I realized it would look better if it's a little closer so I transformed it by enlarging the sketch.
Line Art
This is not as simple as it looks because it is actually composed of multiple layers. We have the hat, hair, head, chest, waist, belts, legs, two shoulders, two arms, two hands, card, and cane. The reason earlier, making and animation of it, is the reason for this multiple layers which is also why overlapping lines won't be a bother.
Base, Shading, and Lighting
As I have said before, this is just the general idea of how I colored this because I colored the part separately.
First is the base colors. Then, I did the shading where in I clipped a layer to the base and applied multiply layer option for it to appear darker. Sometimes I clip another layer depending on how dark or how many shade I want to have. The same applies to lighting but instead of multiply I use the layer option add which makes the base color lighter.
Shading
Lighting
I'm quite satisfied with this but what I did next kind of disappoint me. But I guess I'll do better next time. We're always learning to become better so it's fine for now.
Background and Effects
Based on the lore, Lex Vega is a really mysterious woman - appears mysteriously at night and vanish with no sign of her at all.
So, I did a night background and erased the center with a soft brush to make a somewhat glow effect for her.
I also added an overlay layer to match her color based on the splintercard. Another add (glow) layer for her face mark as well as the glow on gems. For the glowing particles I used droplet brush, copied the layer and applied gaussian blur.
Final Illustration Product
All in all, this is how it looks after I saved every pieces and arranged the layer according to the right order so there will be no overlapping lines.
Animation
Model Parts
Below is the saved png file of every part of the illustration. I opened a new project where I imported this images and then rasterized it. After arranging the correct layers I saved it as psd file so I can import it to Live2d.
Character Modeling
I can't explain it step by step but to sum it up, after I imported my psd file, I added parameters to my character for the movements. Some of the parts I used rotation movement, some with deformation, and some with manual mesh depending on how I want it to move specially the stretching o the body, or the chest, or the hair. Because we don't want these to look stiff.
Model Animation
After our character model, we have now the model file and will proceed to the animation process. I just import the model file and adjust the scene canvas. For the animation I just set the parameters on the keyframe base on the time. I just did the simplest here because I'm not so familiar with the software yet.
Speed Paint
For the illustration, I have this speed paint so you can see that the coloring was did by part. There's no video of the animation process since it does not have a time lapse so I would have to record it manually but still did not because if I did it would be full of trial and errors. So not really worth recording yet.
https://youtube.com/shorts/akg0HwZGtn4?feature=share
Soft wares
Clip Studio Paint Pro (Illustration)
Live2D (Animation)
Reference
Lux Vega
Hi hi! Nice to see you down here. Just so you know I just downloaded Live2d so I don't know how it works at all. I also know that I have some incorrect anatomy (I don't really have any posing reference because I wanted to be able to create poses on my own) and I also know I have some animations wrong and some are stiff. We'll learn eventually.
Most of my Live2D knowledge came from the Official Live2D Cubism English Tutorial Playlist which I "speed watched"XD
This was another new, satisfying, and exciting work that I've done even though it has a lot of flaws.
Continue to see me working with different art style because I decided to not have one!
For someone who loves to try different things, I would only be restricting myself to have a specific art style.
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