Return of Terry McGinnis, or Kira learns a lesson in 3-point perspective

The overwhelmingly warm reception to this piece was so amazing, thank you all for that! But since it was actually a 'draw it again' piece that kicked my butt many times over, I thought I'd do a step-by-step write up so that you all may both laugh at (and maybe learn from) all my mistakes that went into creating it.

  Here’s the side-by-side comparison of the original, leading up to this year! As you can see, the 2014 original (and the underwhelming 2018 redraw) were straight-on profile view, horizon-line at the center-of the canvas type shots with just the barest suggestion that the background is Neo-Gotham. 

I started redrawing it again because I was at a total loss of inspiration of anything to paint this month. I got this far with a fairly straight forward redraw when I realized that no amount of fancy lighting and updated palettes could salvage a stale composition:

  Although I was hesitant to scrap the entire thing and lose some of the things I liked (mostly, the light-shadow transitions defining his chin/forehead), I knew that that draft was just not worth pursuing.

I decided to take the camera way, way up, giving us a downwards view of Terry and the city below him. As a bonus, that high angle was more reminiscent of the shot of Terry in Return of the Joker looking down at Neo-Gotham, too!

Here's the original sketch I did, establishing what I thought was enough of a top-down 3-point perspective. (I was wrong). The angle is more interesting than my earlier draft where we were looking at Terry straight-on, but here's where I'm about to Donk On Up....

Although I can't remember what my thought process at this point actually was, looking at this stage I can hazard a guess: I cleaned up the pose, using anatomy forms I'm more familiar with (rather than the top-down view of his shoulders that I was obviously super uncomfortable with). Granted, his anatomy does look better than the earlier sketch, but what I did without realizing was: I completely eradicate the top-down three-point perspective. It's back to a straight-on shot!! I even further emphasized the straight-on-ness with the stock photo I used as a placeholder.

But I moved ahead to the background, convinced I had the draftsmanship of Terry's form down. I set up the background and my 3-point perspective grid with that high vantage angle I'd originally envisioned, still totally unaware my sketch was no longer going to match it...

I'm going to do a full video walkthrough of how I photobash later (maybe for July's rewards?), but in the meantime, here’s a quick rundown of how I tossed that Neo-Gotham background together. 

Basically, I 

1) set up three polygons in Photoshop for the perspective grid (BAM Animation covers how to do this in their Perspective Drawing in Photoshop video at 1:59, but if you're also still learning perspective like I do, please watch that whole video! It's SO informative, so easy to digest, and just SO DAMN HELPFUL)

2) did a simple black and white gradient to establish base values, 

3) added a quick color wash 

4) began photobashing in building elements cut out from royalty-free photos I either bought from photobash.com or found on unsplash.com! (If you're going to photobash, remember to only use photos you've taken yourself, or royalty-free ones with the correct creative commons license!)

...and then with the basic, rough background set up, I began to paint Terry. As is. Without realizing. That he was massively out of perspective.

I was maybe three or four hours deep into painting Terry before I even saw the problem. Up until then, I just did not see it. But when I finally did see it, it hit me so suddenly like a freight train. I remember sitting there in disbelief, now unable to see anything BUT how out of perspective Terry was. 

I knew there was no other solution other than to either scrap Terry entirely -- which was unthinkable, I’d already struggled so hard and so long on his face, I couldn’t bear to lose all of it -- or scrap just his body and hope that I could marry his current head to a new body.

I went for the latter, but it took me a while to figure out how the human form would look from that high angle.

The first thing I had to do was go back and grab my perspective grid. Then it was a lot of trial and error, drafting and re-drafting his body until it looked at least passably correct. 

^ Yikes. One of the errors.

I spent a lot of time working his torso, noodling on where I thought the light would hit, where it wouldn't hit... I don't know how I got through it, to be honest.

Eventually, miraculously, he stared to look right! I had to warp his face to emphasize the perspective (prior to warping, it was too long. I had his hairline-to-nose and nose-to-chin distances at about the same length, but because the camera angle is so high above him, his forehead-to-nose length, which is much closer to us as a viewer, would be longer than his nose-to-chin length). The final step was going back in to clean up the background a bit, Color Dodge some environment glow on him, and color correct (man, every now and then I *think* I'm painting in really vibrant colors and then it turns out... I was not).

So, uh, what lessons did I learn?

1) If you're going to do a background, FIRMLY establish your perspective and your character in it from the get-go. Don't approach it in the disjointed way I did, or you may end up with your background in one perspective while your character is in another. 8D

2) Sometimes, even if you already put in the time and effort, you just have to scrap it. I had to scrap both my original draft and the first body of my second draft (and several iterations of his eyes - those downcast eyes gave me problems!). 

But if I hadn't scrapped them -- if I'd instead tried to stubbornly rework them, I'd probably have spent more time for a worse result, and I'd never have ended up with the final piece! (Part of me wonders if I should have taken that lesson further and scrapped his whole head, too.)

3) It's good to push yourself out of your comfort zone every now and then. If it were up to me, I'd stay firmly in my comfort zone of dramatic lighting against, like, a plain photography studio background, but then I'd be denying myself the opportunity to tell fuller stories, like I was able to with this piece!

Ultimately, I'm really glad I scrapped that first draft and went with a more dramatic camera angle (it's giving me Ghost in the Shell feels! A lot of people have commented it’s giving them Blade Runner/Spider-Verse vibes too, which I’m so down for). I'm also really glad I approached the lighting with more intent than either the 2014 or 2018 version of this piece, because I hope the viewer feels something from how Terry's turned away from and unaware of the warm, bright light shining behind him because he's too focused on the cold glow of the city beneath.

Thanks for reading! See you next month!