Sunday, March 4, 2012

Void Yai





This fellow was painted for Paizo Publishing's Dragon Empires Gazetteer. I've posted Yai on this blog before (back in August and September of 2011). They are a type of Oni, a creature from Japanese myth and folklore.

I'm posting some preliminary sketches for this piece, although there was nothing terribly mysterious about the process. I began with a few loose roughs, eventually settling on the rough sketch above. From there, I simplified and refined my initial idea a little, shifting the position of the club and defining the shape of the character. I then added detail and refined the drawing until I had a nice, clean character design on which to base the painting.

I wanted this character to feel large but I didn't want to "hulk" him out and with no background, I couldn't use a surrounding environment to reinforce his size. Consequently, I added a bit of extra slope to his shoulders and made him bottom heavy to give him a strong sense of mass, almost as if gravity has gradually shifted the bulk of his body downward. If I'd made his head smaller, he'd practically be a triangle, which is just what I wanted!


2 comments:

  1. Your works are great, man! Congratulations from Brazil! Many references... Do you work in games?

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  2. I loved the illustration so much that my Half-Oni Ninja is the son of this mofo !
    Amazing work !

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