Goldir

Hey there guys. This is my submission for the Lord of the Rings Character.

His name is Goldir, he is obviously... well... sauron's apprentice. He's a pretty cool guy... only NOT. He's actually pretty much pure evil. Corrupted after his family was murdered by sauron himself, he found the way of darkness through magic and fighting. He learned to control the powers of his own muscles, thusly, creating a whip made of the lengthened muscle tendons in his left arm. He has fashioned small metal hooks and barbs and attached them to the ends. Sinister to the core, no one has seen his face in years and it is believed if you were to remove his helmet, there would be nothing but the scent of despair and years of hatred.

My process for creating this creature was fairly simple.

If you refer to the image above, you can see that I start with a normal layer and two colors. One for the basic silouhette and one for the outlines and details.

Then I move on and create two more layers on top of that, one in multiply, one in screen. I then use a soft brush, with pressure sensitive opacity to create realistically blended strokes.

After the shades and hilights are all layed out, the rest of the process is simple. I create an overlay layer and proceed to block in the straight colors that I feel look best.

The second detail layer is also created in this way.

For my first legit concept image I'm pretty proud. Hope you guys like it and I can't wait to see the other submissions!