Lizard Man after Feng Zhu

It's the beginning of a new term, and it's back to business.

We started off with a painting exercise, taking some line art (created by Feng Zhu) and painting over it, learning about bounce lighting, layer groups and how to give texture in Photoshop.

The basis of the exercise was a lizard man drawn by Feng Zhu, the legendary concept artist. From the line art we were given free reign as to colouration and details.

This is the initial stage - getting the skin lighting right. This was done by selecting the outline, filling it in with a base colour, and then adding the shading. I created a basic lighting guide (seen in neon green) to show me where the light was coming from and the areas it would be reflected.

With the skin out of the way, it was time for the armour. This used a similar process to the skin - a rough lighting guide, a base colour, and then I began shading. However, I realised once I had completed this that I had been using the wrong brush, and had to start over.

Here is the near complete version. The roughness of the armour is fixed, giving it a more metallic look. I've also added some scratches to both the armour and the creatures skin. Now it was time to give the skin some texture.

I used a stock snake skin image as a basis, and copied and pasted it until it covered all the skin areas. From there, I tidied it with the eraser tool around the edges, and removed it from the claws and other details. I set the layer to overlay, and then I used the eraser again to dull it down so it matched the lighting and was overall more believable.