Ondine, Camael, Dagon and Valkyrie

Ondine, the heartless nymph

The image

The assignement that was given to us was to choose a monster or a mystical creature and re draw it our own way.

I choosed to make a new version of Ondine, an immortal water spirit who turned human after falling in love with a men and marrying him. It is said that despite being a beautiful creature, her husband still decided to cheat on her.  I wanted to represent how jealousy  plunged her into madness. She ended up killing her husband and went back to the depth of the waters,  punishing unfaithful men by luring and drowning them into the Seine.

I haven't done much digital art prior to this project, but it gave me the opportunity to try out this technique where you use a grey underlayer before rendering your image. I think it made the whole process easier and helped the piece come to life quicker.

Poses and expressions

All the posing has been made traditionally. I enjoyed this phase very much because Ondine's movements are supposed to be  fluid and elegant, almost as if she was  water. Because of this, the lines were very satisfying to draw, especially when it came to the tentacles.

Researches

When creating this character, I already had a particular perspective of how I wanted her to be but the more i went through with this project the more ideas came to me.

 It was a real struggle to pick out which main colors would be displayed. I hesitated a lot between blue tones of greener ones. One would make it seem like she had been under water for too long, as if she had turn into a souless ghost and the other would showcase her as a swamp monster.

A detail you may not notice on the drawings are those little veins coming from her mouth and eyes. They could be present because of too much screaming caused by anger and despair, her jealousy seeping through every once of her body. Or it could resemble the crackles of her skin, being a physical image of her falling apart and turning to stone.

Camael, The vengeful Archangel

In parallel, we also had to create a design for a famous heroic figure.

I picked  Camael, The Archangel assimilated to the Sun, justice, willingness and success. His role, amongst others, is also to assist the Archangel Michael in times of War. Apparently, the root of his name could mean God's wrath, but I'm no religious person so every bit of information here, you can find it on the internet.

And with the results I obtained, I came up with a whole new story for our protagonnist. 

In my universe, Camael shall endorse the role of an early judge ascending from the purgatory to punish the siners causing too much harm on earth. He would exercise this fonction for so long that he'd see himself turn into this severe, merciless, stone cold person who'd see the Human race as only black or white.

This time he's coming to slay Ondine, a certain nymph who, as the rumors say, lures unfaithful men in The Seine to kill them.

His halo has eyes as a reference to the allegedly accurate representation of the biblical angels.

His eyes are circled with black to simulate war paint and reflect his conflict with the Human kind.

Finally, his double axe is never quite clean for he has drawn too much blood with it.

This drawing is one that I struggled particularly to finish. I spent too much time figuring out what colors would work best and how to apply them. Playing with the effects and the layers was also a first for me, and I had fun discorvering all the possibilities the stamps offered me. I guess you can say that this piece is a foundation for further improvement.

Poses and expressions

This part is here to translate the multiple sides of Camael such as: him savouring his freedom, seeking guidance from God, fighting, struggling or even drowning his sorrows the human way.

Researches

The universe Camael is in is set in France, during the 17th century, approximatively around Louis XIV's reign.

His facial features were drawn based on the TV show character "Geralt" from the witcher, played by Henry Cavill. His outfit has been thought to match the Versailles' fashion at that time. Camael being associated with the sun, i thought it would be clever to give him  something close to the King Louis' infamous Sun costume.

To accomplish his mission of chasing the sinners, Camael often puts on a mask that hides half his face and leaves no possibility for his victims to see the yes of their murderer. The mask is designed to ressemble one of the venitian carnaval. It adds to the non human, celestial aura of Camael.

"Dagon" by H.P Lovecraft

This project is a bit different from the ones prior. We were given an extract from the book Dagon written by the  fantasy and horror american novelist H.P Lovecraft, and we had to do researches as to illustrate the text the best we could.

Those individual researches would then lead to a group project where we'd have to merge all our ideas together. We would do so to produce 2 comic pages, an illustration, 2 sculpts, turns and so on.

The character

All the drawings were done traditionally.

One rule we had to follow was that our drawing style had to be semi realistic, so all the silhouettes at the left were immediately rejected.

I ended up taking inspiration from the actor Alfred Molina to come up with a face for the protagonnist. I wanted him to look a bit heavy, a bit slow and maybe a bit clumsy. He'd have to showcase big bags under his round eyes, caused by the lack of sleep and stress he had received prior and after his encounter with Dagon.

In the story, the character was a sailor, and maybe someone from the lower class, working overtime for a miserable pay. So I dressed him accordingly by making him try out different worn out uniforms and dirty shoes.

The props

Nothing much to explain here. Our character, after running away from his captors found himself on a strange deserted island, where he discovered a Monolith underground.

You can see every objects he might have interacted with in this image.

The monster

The creature in the middle is my final pick. All the others helped me finding out what i was looking for through my research process.

I imagined Dagon to be all limbs and nothing else. His thinness would clash greatly with the body shape of the main character.

In the text, it is said that the creature had floppy lips, webbed hands and round bulging eyes. My monster should look like he wasn't supposed to live under water for so long. His skin has been pruning and sagging, his bottom lip has collapsed and the flesh on his belly is so thin that it can merely contain the intestine. The tissues under its arms are peeling, appearing as webs stuck to his armpits.

Because he is so tall and thin, he can never fully stand up and even less doing so without support. So he's always somewhat bended and his spline has morphed into a round shell to fit and protect him better.

Lumascript

The deserted island, during the day and night. 

The protagonnist described the texture of the ground as somewhat slimmy. So he waited a few days when he realised it would dry, before going out to explore the archipel. He mentionned it being similar looking to dry lava, so I followed along with this idea. 

A close up of the campfire.

A first option for the cave with the monolith.

The second option for the cave again with the Monolith.

The comic pages

This comic has been made as a teamwork, everyone helping out and putting bits a themselves in this final drawing.

For this reason, I'd like to say that it's all thanks to Léo, Thomas and their hardwork if those panels have now come to life.

Matte Painting

This painting has been done on a very short notice. The project has been stopped and started again a few months later and was to be the base of a compositing exercise.

The assignement was to include a gigantic element (statue, robot, spaceship...) into a landscape and use digital techniques to create a matte painting that we would have to animate on Nuke afterwards.

Many effects like the atmospheric blur are missing because it is something we'll have add later on the compositing software.

Sketches

I did many sketches before coming up with a final idea.  The only thing that stuck with me was that, since the beginning, I knew I wanted to represent a strong female warrior, wether she'd be a Dame du lake, or a protector of sacred temples.

Landscape base

Here's a small painting I did of an actual beach in Iceland. It helped me pick out the elements I wanted to incorporate to my final drawing.

It's about 10X7 cm.

The statue

I decided to go with the Valkyrie. I imagined her fighting in a war along with the nothern Gods. But suddenly, The Nature decides that it has had enough of all the violence, the mountains reaches out and traps her for centuries to come, emprisonning her as she was about to release her battle cry.

The beach where she rests is a cemetery for the creatures who'd been stuck by Nature while fighting this endless war between mythical legends.

Recently, the statue seems to have been crackling here and there, leaving golden streaks trailing down her body. She might still be alive....Maybe she's coming back.

Color testing

Process

I started out traditionnally then transfered the sketch to my computer before finishing the piece with Clip paint studio.

The most difficult part was to paint each element on a seperate layer, so that i'd be easier to animate it on Nuke. I ended up not doing that so the whole compositing process was a lot more tedious than what it was supposed to be.