Félix CARON - Concept Art

Well hello friend

    I'm excited to be a part of The Rookies Awards this year and wish you all the best !

    Regarding my entry, it is a bit of school work done at Artside throughout the years but mostly personnal work done on the side so you get to see the inside of my head a little. 

Hope you enjoy it !

Good ones 

    The good ones are characters that don't really have any background or lore, essentially it's my sketches and quick ideas but a bit more worked on, not sketches anymore and not quite big worlbuilding either.

Process

    The same process was used for the 3. I started with sketches on my sketchbook, put the best one in photoshop, made a line over it, added flat colors. Values are done with a multiply layer on a white fill to prevent the flat colors from messing with my volumes. Throw a bit of linear dodge to add a stronger light, color the muliply with a more saturated color to prevent a muddy look and paint over.

Jack the pyromancer

    This one is a bit more woldbuilding project than the 3 before though they are in the same setting.

Process

    Same as the others : sketches, line, flat colors, I fill in white to work my values that way i'm not influenced by the flat colors, little bit of color dodge to indicate light to make it easier to paint over which I mostly do on the points of interest so usually the face, the hands, upper torso sometimes around the belt too.

Victor Wallbreaker

Dark Musketeer

    What if dapper, colorful and boastful musketeer was actually broody, dark and mysterious swordswoman ? 
That's the question that fueled this personnal character.  

Process

    Once again sketch into line then onto flat colors and multiply, once that is done and looking good I add more light and adjust some colors here and there, finally background and tadaa !

Buck Conrad

    Character design done at Artside with the feedbacks of Boell Oyino among this week's possible characters was cyberpunk double agent, which was a bit hard to get down. I went for the classic biker gang infiltration, rough leather jacket, red and warm colors, old clothes. The military side is colder, blue, cleaner. It was a nice challenge and a fun one at that !

Barbarian

    This character was done at Artside with the help of Jeremy Vitry the brief of the week was to make an assassin or a barbarian, I obviously did not go for the subtle option. It was a really fun trope to tackle, playing around with different archetypes like the tribe warrior, the beast hunter or the mercenary, it made the iteration process pretty straightforward but no less enjoyable.

Process

    This process is mostly the same as all the others it is simply an older version and is therefore not as clean in the execution. The first thing I did is find my body type and a nice pose to then work on the gear and design of the character. When that's done and good, onto flat colors, then values with a multiply layer that way I can still change my colors if needed. A small light pass with another fusion layer, might be linear or color dodge, overlay or screen, it really depends on what I want to achieve.
    Finally when all my colors are setup and looking good it's paint over time and done.

Luxury Hotel Hall

    This environment was done for a project at Artside using a 3D base in blender with feedback from Etienne Savoie. I don't often use blender but for this scene it was a real time saver. Even though I had an idea of the angle I wanted to have, being able to move around once the base was established allowed greater control and that was nice.

Process

    Using a 3D base was really usefull to nail the camera, then like with my characters onto line, flat colors and values with multiply and color dodge. Not much repaint in this one though, the main focus was to get a mood down for the whole room not to make a finished illustration.

Witch Hunter

    That's something else that picks my interest, the Solomon Kane type univers, adventurers, flintlocks and witches in the mud. Forgotten town overrun by superstition and odd characters.

Ogvar

    Baldur's gate 3 like many people has been quite an experience and I wanted to share it with people so so I made my character.

Process

    The armored version has a lot of painting on it, fusion layers were mostly used to adjuste some values here and there but that's it. The second on though cut at the hips is simply flat colors and multiply layer.

Shattered Empire

    This is a more warhammer inspired personnal setting, essentially space pirates, law enforcers, no gooders and justice seekers all plotting and fighting for a spot in the wide known and unknown universe.

The knives

    All pirates are rogues but all rogues aren't pirates, the knives are a particular vicious crew though, their thing is fear and stealth essentially night lords, that was before I really went into making a lore for this setting and I was just inspired by warhammer I'll likely remake this one at one point.

Process 

    This one went through a lot, I wanted to paint most of it so once the sketch and line was done I worked in grayscale adding color later with overlay to give me a base to paint over everything. This was messy and it took a while but I learned a lot and I think it turned out great.

The iron claws

    An iron will for an iron grip, reckless and savage you do not simply say not to an iron claw.

Process

    The good old multiply process changed a bit for this one since I wanted to go a bit more stylised. I focused on the main parts of the character, the face, the torso and the arm, finding a big/medium/small balance for his prosthetic was fun espescially given that I have rarely worked on any kind of robots or mechas, so industrial joints and robots references came in handy. Regarding the process my multiply wasn't a dark as usual and I worked a lot of occlusions in black which is something that I didn't do before. I used a color dodge to add a bit of light and painted over here and there notably his face and parts of his arm.

    I really like this character given that it's while working on him that I really identified my process clearly, process that I still use today for exemple with the pyromancer.

Law and order

    The first two are military working for the empire, the other two are mercenaries working for indivual powers of the government.

The deep toxic wastes of the big mining city complex

    Pits of pollutions filled with sickness, monsters and relics from a forgotten age, a good way to make a profit is to bring proof of slaughtered beast and to sell newly found items on the black market should you make it out alive. Another part of the space setting that I'm working on.

Process

    For the environment since I'm not used to working on pictures like this it was a bit of an uphill battle, first the thumbnail phase, the question here was how do I show those tunnels leading to big toxic open areas underground.

    Once that was good I went onto values which was another problem I had. I could not find an overhaul mood that I liked yet, so once I found something I was somewhat happy with I continued onto lining the whole thing and making my flat colors. Finally I changed the whole mood to have something more toxic and imposing.

    To make it easy for me I split the image into sections, I made singular layers and worked on them with clipping masks, the characters were all on one, the boat was on one, the tunnel arch and pipes, the building and finally the water. All those layer groupes have a flat color layer, a multiply and a light, at the end I mostly painted on top with other fusion layers to make adjustments.

That is all 

    Thank you for your curiosity if you've scrolled this far, I know it's a lot a work in one place.
I hope you enjoyed your stay and I wish you the best.
Here's my portfolio artstation don't hesitate to reach me there.