Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Burning of Lake-Town #3 - Process

Back in August I shared with you the pieces that I completed for the LoTR Battle of Lake-Town Gen Con 2012 expansion. Today, I have for you the process breakdown for the third and final Smaug piece completed for this expansion. Let's start off with having a look at the finish piece before jumping into the process...

The Burning of Lake-Town #3 (Smaug the Mighty)
© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

Having already covered a great deal of the back story and shared in depth walk throughs with the first process post and second process post I am going to address the parts that are unique to this piece. The third piece needed to depict a "Single Attack". Talking with my art director we agreed an image depicting a bite attack or the moments just prior to the bite would be good for this piece. I instantly thought an extreme close up of Smaug's mouth as he descends to grab some unlucky citizen of Lake-Town in his mouth. I was immediately very excited about working on this piece and couldn't wait to start it. For me it was going to be very different from the rest of the Smaug pieces I have already done and be an interesting view I have never done before. I got to woke of the thumbnails and this is the one I submitted...

The Burning of Lake-Town #3 - thumbnail
© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

With the the thumbnail completed and approved I moved forward with the final drawing.  I have shouted out into the internet about this before and I will do it again.... REFERENCE! Even though I am creating an imaginary creature it still needs to be based on the real world around us. I am also depicting the head of this imaginary creature at an extreme foreshortened angle. If any of this looks wrong or even just a little off it will detract heavily from this piece. I have a small alligator head that I use all the time to draw from to make sure perspective and foreshortening is correct for things like dragon mouths. With the proper reference to make sure everything looks and feels believable I moved forward with the final drawing...

The Burning of Lake-Town #3 - drawing
© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

With an approved drawing I began working on the final painting. My new process was beginning to gel and I made quick work of this dragon. I was also really excited about working on this piece, so that helped my speed and enthusiasm. In nice easy steps you can make a line drawing turn into a dragon...

The Burning of Lake-Town #3 - process
© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

This piece was approved without any revisions. Seeing it cropped for the card I feel that it may appear to read as if the head is disembodied. I tried to make sure that both my cropping and FFG's cropping provided an appealing image. For the most part I hope I was successful. Here is how the final card turned out...


One last look at my final version. This is the last of my Smaug pieces for the Battle of Lake-Town expansions, but fear naught, there will be more Smaug paintings from me later in the year! RAWR!

The Burning of Lake-Town #3 (Smaug the Mighty)
© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

That is all for another exciting Wednesday on the blog, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

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