Commissioned Ikran Leader Art

[Eternal Enigma]

Original Image



Cropped

(preparations for Photoshop)



Colored and re-imagined



Eastern Sea Clan Leader

My goal here was to digitally bring this image to life creating color and depth without really taking anything away from the original artist's design. Before I even began I realized that obviously she is the focal point of the piece, but at the same time I really felt what the original artist was doing with the background so before I even saved the original image to my computer to work on it I already knew exactly what the background and foreground was going to be. This is no longer a static image and what I mean by that is every element of this image is on a separate layer and this image is made up of over 50 layers that can easily be changed. I spent all day Friday doing most of the work and today I did all of the touch up work. For me the most difficult part is the touch up work because if I spot an error I've got to figure out what layer it's on and then correct it. This image is completely changeable. If there's something about the image that you dislike such as the strand of hair that looks as if it's coming out of her armpit or anything like that I can remove it or change it.

This is only my second attempt at anything like this and everything I learned while working on Pamtseotu's Avatar I fully applied to this one. This is just a color overlay with a lot of cut-out work and masking. I took screen shots of her from the movie and imported those into my project and that's how I got the colors. The only thing I changed design-wise is her mouth. In the original image she's basically just holding her mouth open and in mine I wanted to give her a more intense look so I made it look like she was clenching her teeth. On the left side of the image I thickened up her hair. Whenever I was coloring her eyes I never could get them to look right so I did a black color overlay with a white highlight and it looks better than anything else I tried. In some areas I allowed some of the original paper color to bleed through and I'm using that as a natural means of creating white shine/highlights to aid in the illusion of depth. The only uncolored element is the knife blade. There is one error that I accidentally saved, but if I don't point it out you'll never see it.

As I'm about to post this image I'm still looking at it in Photoshop trying to think of anything else I could do to make it better. I've spent the past hour just looking at it and flipping from the original cropped version to this one and I'm pretty happy with the final result and what I was able to do with it.

All of the credit goes to the original artist and I've got to give him props for such a nice drawing.

I hope you like it. ^_^


Edit: I also put a poof on the end of her tail.

[_Omaticaya_]

^WoW, just WoW *Claps* Bravo! Very nice ^_^

[Wameyn]

dude thats freaking sick!!!!!!

two thumbs up for bringing this to life with color, really really sick!

[Eternal Enigma]

I'm glad you like it... ^_^

[Wameyn]

heck yeah man, I can tell you spent a lot of time with it

[prowler]

Looks really cool EE, great work as always

[Wind12]

Just came across this part of the forum, awesome drawing( I didn't know you could commission people to make them) you got there Waymen, and it is amazing what EE did with it. I plan on taking some time to look up some of the fan art, I really love this forum thanks for sharing this stuff guys.

[Wameyn]

Search the website deviantart Wind, you can find some really cool Avatar stuff there.

[Wind12]

Will do buddy.