3 October 2012

Homunculi FMA Playmat

After finishing up the Hellsing mat, which I will talk about another day lets try and keep the orange to a minimum for a bit shall we, I moved straight onto this one and noticeably this has resulted in a change of approach to how I deal with black. 

Before the Hellsing mat I was always having issues keeping black just that, even the really dark versions tended to dry in such a way as to make them look grey in certain angles. This turned out to be due to a combination effect between the pigment and the material of the mats. During the production of the Hellsing mat which was one I definitely needed to get the blacks right on I finally figured out a way around this problem and that insight quickly became a driving force for the style this mat ended up with.

While I had intended to keep the colours as flat as possible both because I wanted to match the style of the anime and because I just quite like the idea of trying to create a piece of art that is super flat (though on that count i suspect I wouldn't be content unless the image was 1 atom thick, most art materials and canvases are far from flat making any image therefore anything but) However the piece fought this approach at every turn most notably in the form of the rather large light source in fathers right hand and in the end I decided to just go with the flow and see where it ended up using what i had learned on the use of blacks on the previous mat and expanding it to help deal with the heavy amount of lighting this mat required. I am glad I went this route in the end its not where i originally ended to end up but if you already know where your going when you start a piece of art why even bother with the journey, it will always be more perfect in your mind, i would have never have considered lighting the background and the pillars as i did for example without the knowledge gained from the Hellsing mat.

And yes if you have counted there are 8 sins in this image having not actually watched Brotherhood yet I got a tiny bit mixed up with who was who. Still as far as I am concerned two sloths are better than one   and the weight of the image would have been thrown off by removing the version from the original anime, though I'm sure I saw her character design being reused in the remake somewhere while doing research. I almost included the few other homunculi from the first version too but in the end decided they could be represented by the creepy eyes and mouths in the background if thats how you chose to interpret those the other options being they are the true forms or created by the kid.

I think my favourite things about the final peice is just how bored father looks and that greed is likly to get himself beeten up if he isnt careful.

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