The Making of "Super Soldier"

For this week's painting, I'm painting the Marvel comics character X-23.

Step 1: Lineart (1 hour, 40 minutes)

To start off the piece, I worked with the Maria character model in Poser 8 to set up the base pose and anatomy:


From there, I used some references for the X-23 character to design her clothes and hair, all with the round brush and pen tool, with flow and opacity on Pen Pressure control, in Photoshop CS6. The belt is made with the circular marquee, a stroke, and some layer effects, including beveling and inner shadows.






Step 2: Color Flats and very basic shading (2.5 hours)
To start with, I set up the basic color flats using the round brush along with masking. Once I had X-23 and the Sentinel head colored, I set up the basic shading for their bodies. I couldn't quite figure out how to recreate the feral look of the rough with shading, so I ended up masking the rough at a reduced opacity to include some of its elements.
Once that was done, I proceeded to create the background. I'm going for a purely portrait piece this time, so I decided to forego a detailed background in favour of a grunge look. Using the explosives brush I created for my previous painting, I created the grunge background as well as the explosion and smoke trailing the Sentinel's head. Finally, I created the base for the electricity coming from the Sentinel head, and created the X-23 by copying my grunge background and applying various layer styles and blending modes.










Step 3: Toning and Shading (1 hour, 20 minutes)
For the next step, I worked more on the explosion and smoke. Once that was done, I set up a palette of various colors and toned X-23 and the Sentinel's head, using the colors in my palette with the round brush, set to airbrush mode and with a lot of gaussian blurring and opacity changes.

Step 4: Refined Toning and Shading (1.5 hours)
I went in and refined the toning for X-23's musculature and clothes. I also worked on her mouth and the blending of her muscles' shading.

Step 5: FX and Finalization (0.5 hours)
To finish things off, I first focused on the Sentinel head. I added a lot of toning and shading using the round brush, gaussian blur filter, and playing with opacities and layer blending modes. Once that was done, I worked with the background to make it darker, putting X-23 and the Sentinel in more contrast. Finally, I added shadows to establish how far back the rather massive Sentinel's head is.




Made from September 9-September 14
Total Time: 7.5 hours
Materials/Programs: Poser 8, Photoshop CS6