[THREAD=35119]Click here to see my full Gallery in the OP of this thread.[/THREAD]
CAP 7 - Steel/Ghost
When the typing was decided for CAP7, I knew that many other artists would flood the contest with wispy floating ghost designs. I wanted to steer clear of that completely. So I chose to make a robot that looks like a skeleton. It shows off the steel typing perfectly, while still evoking the visual imagery of the undead. The result was my most successful CAP design so far.
Sketch
(click thumbnail for full image)
Supporting Art
(click thumbnails for the full sketches)
Description
This design resulted from me making several sketches of robot skeletons, one of which had the head you see in the design above. I was hooked on the head design instantly. Unfortunately, the rest of the sketch was pretty terrible, so I took the head and built a completely new body around it. This design was basically built to show off the head, which I still think is the best part of the whole thing. Although, I must admit, I think the boots turned out pretty nifty too.
I obsessed over this design more than any other design of mine in the past. The initial sketching only took an hour or so, but I logged 30-40 hours after that working on inking, coloring, and reworks. Since the design was a robot, it was literally an obsession of mine to make this drawing as clean and precise as possible. I spent hours and hours just "noodling" (that's what I call it when I add little flourishes to a drawing that almost no one else would notice). You could argue that since this thing is supposed to be dead, that it should look a bit ragged and worn. Yeah, but there's just something cool about crisp reflections on metal that I really love -- so I went all the way with it.
The color scheme was not decided until the last minute, but I knew white would be used a lot -- on the head in particular. It really needed white to play up the skeleton angle. I don't think any other color would conjure up the same imagery. Steel blue and gold accents seemed fitting to drive home the fact that this thing is made of metal.
I spent a lot of time cooking up a backstory for this creature, and ended up writing it down in the form of a children's bedtime story:
Fable of the Steel Ghost: A Bedtime Story for Young Trainers
This design came in second place, with the final poll coming down to the wire -- my best finish in a CAP design competition so far. By the time the polls ended, I didn't really care whether it won or not. It was just great to hear all the positive feedback and to see people get behind this design I put so much work into. I had fun with the design from the very start, so all the work was really a labor of love.
