Illustration #129 + rewards, sketches and doodles!

Hey everyone, here's a new illustration and some bonus stuff! Felt inspired to make a scene with some purple elves again this time, so it turned out... very purple! I hope you all like it. :)

Check out the rewards in the attachments! You can also always find them in the rewards collection post, alongside all other past rewards you might have missed!

I did thumbnail sketches of a couple of scenes before starting this illustration, one of which ended up being the painting. I've included both thumbnail sketches here and, hmm... I did them in different styles and I'm not sure I like either. They serve their purpose I suppose, but I prefer when sketches are more attractive so I can feel better about sharing them. I wanna see if I can do something about that going forward.

Both of the extra doodles I've also included here bear signs of my reoccurring daydreaming of making a game of some sort. 😅 Character portraits for a visual novel or something along those lines was in the back of my head for these. I often think about what style I would aim for if I was going to illustrate a game. The style of fully rendered art that I do for my illustrations would be far too slow to create, so I'd need something a bit simpler. The doodles are a small exploration into that I suppose.

Doodle 1 is a couple of quick character doodles I did as a break from working on the bigger illustration. I'm not very happy with them, especially the left one, but they still worked well as a small thing to draw to get my brain unstuck and regain some motivation for the bigger illustration.

Doodle 2 is an experiment in returning to working more in greyscale values and then coloring them. It's a thing I used to do more in the past than I do these days, so I'm revisiting it to see if there are benefits there with the knowledge I've gained since then. I'm tempted to do a few more drawings in this style, it feels good. And I feel like it's a style where I can get pretty consistent results, so it might lend itself well to be used for something like a game.

I'm curious to hear your opinions on what sort of illustration style you like to see in 2D games. Do you prefer fully rendered high detail art, or are simpler art styles enough for you? Share some examples you like!

Those are the thoughts I have to share this time around! Thanks as always for the support! Hope you're all having a fantastic May. :)