The cursed building was filled with curses of different levels. I told about one of them in the previous post, the Centipede Monster. I talked about the inspiration and references for its creation.
Turns out there wasn't just one centipede curse on that building. It has several monstrous man-eating centipedes inside. Dandara had to deal with them all. In a specific scene. One of the centipedes tries to devour Dandara, catching her off guard. But the sorceress is skilled, she already knew what the monster intended to do. Then, quickly, she dropped to her knees, fell to the ground, and shot the creature in the head, just to kill it with an explosion afterward.
I loved the creating process of this scene, both the imagination and the practical part, the writing. That was the moment that I had the wonderful idea of recreating the scene with digital art using Photoshop.
At first, the idea was to draw only the centipede I showed in the previous post. I even commented that drawing the extension of the insect was complicated due to perspective. That's why I used a very peculiar kind of tripod that has the shape of a centipede. I placed the object in the desired position, then took some pictures of it. These photos worked as references to draw the sketch I needed.
It was exactly at that moment that the scene in question and my little dolls body kun and body chan came to my mind. Body kun and body chan are small mannequins that looks like Action Figures to create references. In this art I used only the Body Chan, which is the female mannequin, to represent Dandara.
I placed the little doll in a position where it was possible for her to shoot the insect and then finish it off. The Body Chan is not as flexible as I would like it to be, in addition to being fragile. So fragile that I couldn't put the gun in her hand. Even so, I got the scenario that would later become the reference for an art that represented such an interesting fanfic scene.
I was so excited to use my “toys” in this process that I didn't even notice a small mistake. My friend (Rodolfo Stefano) commented on it.
I forgot to calculate which hand her gun would be in. If Dandara is me, then she should use her right hand. After all, I'm right-handed. But Dandara is me in a parallel universe, where life circumstances and environment could make her an ambidextrous person. Not by genetics, but by survival. Not to mention, but she can use two weapons at the same time.
So, I believe it's not a big problem that I made the art with the gun in my left hand. Even so, I consider it a mistake, as the holster is also on the left side and the character has not yet evolved enough to use only her left hand as if she were left-handed. The miscalculation was there at the beginning when I built the scenario for the reference. I promised myself to pay more attention to these details.
But anyway, back to the art itself. The first challenge was the centipede. I didn't want to draw her from the beginning again. I thought about using previous art and make some modifications and, perhaps, simplifying the artwork, but I had to draw some parts of the centipede from scratch and only used a few layers of the previous art.
Because of this difficulty, I chose to make fewer segments on the body of the curse, thus simplifying the process. Then I used the same color swatches. It turned out wonderful.
However, with a bonus, one more detail. The drool in the creature's mouth. Since I was a little girl, I've loved drawing slimy things of all kinds. To give this slimy look, I used a soft brush and a light color, close to white. Then I lowered the opacity of the layer to create transparency and added some details to make the glow.
That’s it! There is the centipede monster salivating to devour the sorceress. I loved the result. It was too beautiful. I want to do more drool or sticky things in future arts.
Now, the real challenge, drawing Dandara in the same doll position. Challenging yes, but a lot of fun too. It wasn’t that complicated since I had saved the color swatches. The weapon I drew without reference, and it turned out better than I expected. The shot detail, bullet and sparks are PNG images I downloaded from PNGWing.com.
I love Dandara and I love to draw her.
For the Background I wanted something that resembled the scene. Dandara, Alex and the thousands of curses are inside of an “abandoned” and dark building. I downloaded an image of a wall with the door from Adobe Stock, added some textures to make the place look dirty and old. I added one more dark blue solid color layer, then lowered the opacity and blended the layer to multiply, which resulted in this dark setting.
I did the same thing with the characters, I used a dark blue solid color layer with the same background changes, but I used a soft brush on the layer mask and erased the color in some parts of the characters, which gave an idea of light entering through the open door.
The result was surprising. The only thing that really bummed me out was that I didn't calculate which hand the gun should be in.
And you, what did you think of the art? And the chapter? Give your opinion, suggestions, and critics in the comments.
See ya!
A kiss.
