Splinterlands Art - Redwyrn and Aranduriel

My submission for the Splinterlands art contest https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@splinterlands/splinterlands-art-contest-week-353

So I love the how to train you're dragon franchise and the momment when Hiccup and Toothless first real bond with the nose touch. So I wanted to make a splinterlands version of it. I also pushed myself to not do a line art/cartoon style. Overall I'm really happy with it(except the hands. hands are hard.)

So I chose these two for a couple of different reasons. The first was that I wanted characters/cards from the dragon splinter. The second was that I wanted it to be something that could happen within the lore. Which meant Xio and Rage were out. But Red Wyrms only follow Rage out of fear(which given Rage's stats is fair. Seriously. They're intense) So the idea of a Red Wyrm teaming up with Aranduiel is kinda plausiable. After all a Red wyrm dragon and Arandiuel might have a chance. (well not really. Have you seen Rage's stats?) But they might consider it.

And Aurendiel's a bit of a dragonkiller, so I tried to change her expression to be more haughty "I could kill you if I needed to" sort of thing instead of Hiccups "I think we can bond but I'm also really worried you're going to eat me" look.

This artwork was done on my Ipad with the drawing program procreate and now I'll you my process. The first thing I did was grab references, to start snapping pictures of Redwyrn and Aranduriel from their lore sections, and screen shots from the similar scene on How to Train your dragon.

From there sketching began! Since I was going to be making a refrence to the How to train your dragon's movies I didn't need to worry about composition all that much. That hard work was already done by the wonderful folks over at dreamworks.

Then refined it a bit. It also took me a while to get Auranduriel's body shape. I have a tendency to draw folks bulkier then she is.

(You can also see my references. Also can I say that the design of Aranduriel is super fun.)

Then I blocked in colours so I could make sure I still like it. It also helps me figure out if the composition is any good. I also tried to keep to the original designs as much as possible but I did decide to simplify Aranduriel's top quite a bit.

Then Redwyrn got some shading. I did a lot of blending which is my favorite. I also ultimately decided to not include smoke or fire coming out of their nose as it made it feel like they were readying an attack which wasn't the mood I was going for.

Then Auranduriel got some shading. Getting the face right, or at least so that I didn't hate it was hard. Same with the hands.

From there we move onto finder details, more face details, and of course starting the background. I wanted something simple partly cause I was losing steam working on this but also because I didn't want the background to detract from the main folks.

I also decided to nix the magic Aranduriel was doing as it again made it feel more threatening then I was going for. It was supposed to be a moment of trust and magic that could hurt the other person doesn't match that.

And viola, the final work.

Coluring and Rendering her hair was so freaking fun. Don't ask me how she gets it to stay like that, but it looks great.

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Also if there is some character scene you'd like to see re imagined with splinterlands art lemme know as this was super fun.