Bullyking
Personal project and practice of character design, inspired by the myth that Vikings used big horns on their helmets. Using elements from Vikings' culture like the rustic clothing and prominence of the sturdiness of them, applying details in the clothes and the symbols of the culture.
The main idea of the project was to find a way to represent the vikings an other cultures from the same region. But I standed out the myth that they used horns on their helmets, so I interpreted the myth and took it to the real life, relating the horns with the bulls' horns, because this animals has some characteristics like sturdiness that remembers how people have seen the vikings talking of physical features and the usual stereotype, the perfect being to be the representative of this culture if it is compared with an animal. So I showed the vikings now with real horns, this was de main idea, then, I used clothes like coats, belts and animal skins like how they have been described. By last, the most amazaing characteristic that I took was that vikings used to take care of animals most of the year, that's why the character has a rooster on his hands.
I used Adobe Photoshop to create all the illustration, first drawing the sketch with the usual brushes. After that, I added the base color in a layer, using a chromatic palette of warm colors, but taking care of have all the objects separately by color, for example all the objects with red color in one layer, then the skull of the head in other layer, and etc. Next, I paint all the details layer by layer, classifying them among light and shadow, because I use the screen mode for lights and multiply mode for shadows, using layer masks for each one. By last, I add the lineart and other little details.
This was an amazing project, because people sais they loved how I conceptualized the character taking important real or fake facts about this culture. I learnt more about vikings, about their lives, and how the vision that We have about them was influenced by ancient stories of man or other civilizations.
Thank you for your support!
