We had a project recently in our Digital Tools class where we needed to design and paint a vehicle of some sort with reflective qualities. The concept had to be our own and not a copy from an existing vehicle.
Unfortunately I lost the file of the first sketch which made me try to redesign it from memory in this sketch. This was actually helpful because I was able to keep the interesting stuff I could remember but keep an open mind about everything else and how it would work together seeing as I couldn't remember all of it. The red line box is to help with perspective so parts don't get wonky or start to skew.
Next was colour, this isn't meant to actually be a Halo Vehicle, I just really like the colour scheme so I tried it out. The red was added later but on this layer just so it would look like faded design stripes or markings. I'm fairly notorious for painting on the wrong layer in photo shop, as you can see there are some highlights on the darker green area which was meant to go on my highlight layer. This isn't the biggest issue but it is something I'm trying to work on so I can organize my layers better and have more accurate process work.
Next was to lay down a gradient background which will eventually be reflected on the surface of the vehicle itself. I also added a few shadows so I could tell where planes were changing and get a bit more depth.
This is a fairly big step forward seeing as some of process stuff happens all over the place. There are now highlights and some rough ideas of reflected light
And here is the final, more details, more colour, more everything.
I'm generally happy about it I think the reflective quality is there but I regret not having something in the background that would have made the reflection more obvious. I tried to add in a bit to suggest that there could be something off to the left but now it seems to muddy it up a bit. I'm glad I decided to change the wing colour to red, because the green was a bit too over powering.
I like the sense of depth I got and the glowing quality from the power ball, but if I come back to this and repaint it I'll try to make the reflection more clear and the finished product more clean.
