The Making of sinner

CGSociety :: Reader Project: Sinner
The Making of 'Sinner'
Kuang Hong, 25th July 2005

Since the start of the project for my company, I'd been doing mainly character designs on monsters, demons and other fiends. In working on all of this, my style has slowly changed on the area of concept arts.

It was one of the days after work, while staring at a gun model on my table, I wondered how a feminine looking man would look carrying a huge gun. So I picked up my pencil and followed the initial idea I had in mind and sketched it out. Sinner’s line art was done in one go, in just two hours.

When I first started coloring, due to the fact that I only wanted it to be a character presentation, for a long time I did not spare any thoughts for the environment/background of the image or the story of the person. However, as the process of finishing the piece approached the end, I’d slowly thought up a story for him, and created a special worldview for it. His name is Zylias.

I like using blue pencils to do my drafting. They can be very messy, because when scanned, most of the time the lines are very light. So when I feel that the image is complete, I’d run it over with a 2B pencil and then scan it into the computer. Adjusting the contrast in Photoshop finishes my preparation before the coloring of a piece.

Since Painter 6’s watercolor can be only used as the base layer, all my works were colored on single layers just as drawing on a piece of paper. For easier overlapping of colors, on Controls, I use 100% for my brushes opacity. I also use some rougher brushes to emphasize textures.

After laying out the base colors for different areas of the image and moving on to coloring into details, the brush size is frequently adjusted to go into the fine details. And because Painter 6’s watercolor’s overlapping is rather unique, I like to change colors frequently to increase the fine changes in hues. These are the more delicate and subtle things in the image that makes a difference.

Coming to the treatment of the edges, the dark or light colors, the fitting draw up of the edges, deeply affect the depth of the image. A lot of attention was on the details on the character, the little relations between the small items.

After coloring, a little smoky effect was added to the image give a little bit of mystery and mood.

Painter 6’s colors usually seem a little light, so I usually adjust my colors after finishing a piece in Photoshop.

Kuang Hong was born in China, Hu Nan. Loved drawing since young and Japanese comics since Secondary school years. After graduating from university he came in contact with the computer, started into digital arts in 2001.

Most works are illustrations for magazines and publications and concept arts for various games. Currently working as the art director in a game company in Beijing, he does 2D concept arts including characters, monsters and environments.

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Kuang Hong