THE RAFT - Sketches and Procreate Timelapse + Ribbons Update

Hi everyone, 

Here is the breakdown of my process for the third piece I am working on, The Raft (title tbc). 

This piece has probably been the most straightforward one out of the 3, as far as the concept is concerned. 

It started out with some rough sketches, and some attempts at some thumbnails, but I didn't feel much need to explore this one in depth, as I had a pretty good idea of how I want it to look from the get go. 

The main changes were early on, when I was considering whether I wanted the character's front half to still be attached to its back half or not (I went for not), and whether I wanted it to be floating among the drowned remnants of an entire city, or past a single house. (I went for single house. 

Most of the sketching process happened in Procreate, as I needed to do a lot of minor tweaking to proportions and position. I also wanted some flexibility as I could foresee some challenges in trying to figure out where the body separated into two halves, and the perspective and angles of view associated with that. 

The above photobashed image I created very quickly in Procreate, mostly to get an idea of the mood and setting I wanted to go for. This will not be used as a straight reference, and was simply a tool for me to better visualise some of the elements. 

The character's cheery demeanor makes me chuckle. XD

Above are some of the stages the digital sketch went through, all of which you can see in the timelapse that goes with this post. 

Figuring out how the hollowed out body would work in this position was tricky from beginning to end, and to be frank, I am still not entirely certain I have it right in the final sketch, but I got it to a stage I was happy with below. 

Once I got to this point, I scanned the drawing and printed it out to the right format to get it ready to transfer to the final paper. 

At that point however, I decided I didn't like the way it was holding the paddle, so I changed the position of the arms again, as you can see below. 

I am happier with the flow of that pose, and will be transferring that version to the paper in the next few days. 

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AN UPDATE TO THE "RIBBONS" PIECE

Since I posted this post, I changed some things around with this concept, so here's an update on my progress with it. 

The position of the character was the one thing I was fairly certain about, so I jumped into creating the final sketch of it, which you can see below. 

Something still wasn't falling into place regarding the background however, so after spending some time on the other pieces and letting a night go by, I came back to this concept with a fresh eye and a new perspective.

I decided I wanted to go a different route with the scene setting, and used some photographs to approximate some potential moods and background options. 

I discarded the bottom-left one almost immediately, as I don't like the values and contrast range, but I then couldn't decide between the top and bottom-right images. Thank you so much to all of you who helped me choose via my Insta poll! Sorry for the slightly confusing numbering T_T

In the end, the top design seems to have won that battle :) 

[The background image used for that one is photograph by Shaelan Donovan.]

I have a soft spot for the desolate, misty feel of it, and am genuinely excited to work on this piece. 

I have printed out the sized sketch and will be transferring it to the painting surface in the next few days, along with the other pieces! 

I hope you enjoyed this post!

I will have a new Youtube video up on Thursday in which I will be talking about my process for these three so far, so it will probably be nothing new to most of you, but maybe see you there!

In any case, I hope you are all well, and I will speak with you again soon ^^
Take care everyone <3