Woop, woop, we are back, bitches!

..... why did I just type that, I never type stuffs like that.....
Either way, we're back on track with another contest piece, introducing one of my baby children!

So what was the topic? What contest am I talking about?
I'm talking about the fourth contest organised by Celi with the topic: Cyberpunk.

And.... argh, it just fits too perfectly, to not draw, since the rather urban areas of mesoria, do have a rather cyberpunky vibe to them, minus most of the neon.

So I decided to draw my character Fuckface (who mostly calls himself Penion, but lost all of his former memory (including his birthname) in an accident), but give him a more cyberpunk aesthetic.... well, essentially I just gave him some fancy neon stripes on his clothing and made all the orange in his design into a nice neon, overall you can just imagine him like that, but less in-your-face, eye-cancer coloured >w<

Okay, so Celi has a sort of thing in her contest, where she tells us roughly how long the piece should take, so that the works in the end would be more comparable.
The guide for this topic was 5 hours. Enough to make a nice drawing, but by far not enough for any fancy shading, a painting or a background that's more complicated than a square with patterns... well at least for me... I'm a very slow artist... most of my more refined pieces take at least 10 hours and the more sketchy ones take between 7 and 8 so.... it was a challenge and I accepted it xD

So in my mind I though about just doing a half-body-ish illustration, cutting the drawing off below his knees to keep the main focus on our character (and save me from needing to figure out shoes). Pose should be relatively simple, since most of the time should go into the details of his design during the lineart phase.
During the end I already presumed, that I'd have about an hour for shading, so I wanted to try my hands again at what I like to call "negative shading" where you essentially throw a multiply-layer on top of everything and erase the parts where there would be light... I rarely used it on some older sketches last year, that I either scrapped or reshaded, but thought that it was indeed pretty fast and allowed me to have enough time for my usual touch-ups.

So much to my initial pla. Because I wanted to, I wanted to try and create a piece, that would take precisely 5 hours, which is why I started a timer and started with several rough sketches, before settling on this one:

I initially thought about giving him a fancy gun or katana in his right hand, and throw a fancy prosthetic on his left one, giving us a nice balance of his "special" elements.

I then went on to refine things, when things took a drastic turn from my initial plan. You see, at the beginning I wanted to have these metal tubes going through his arm, to hold some sort of metal bands in case, that are attached to a gun... which is just a long and confusing way of saying: I had big plans of screwing a gun to his arm. But then I threw that overboard and decided to give that idea to Bronadan (also planning on doing a second piece featuring him during this time of his life tomorrow, so.... watch out for that *fingerguns*) and instead have some other fucked-up shit happening.

His left arm is missing the lower part, which is replaced by a prosthetic, featuring a "hand" that essentially consists of these three machine-ish elements with replaceable tips... you'll see what I mean in the first stage of the refined sketch, no worries >w<
Several cables attach that arm to the rest of the arm, some of which are exposed to the outside, because the people who gave him these "enhancement" operations, decided that it would be fun to watch, if somone/-thing would cut through them.
And then... I was just sketching something that would essentially be like a shoulder-plate, when my mind told me "spikes".... and I agreed with my mind, so I added spikes! But not on the metal, no... out of his skin.

The entire shoulder-plate idea was moved to the other arm, with the metal tubes that were supposed to go through his arm in order to attach the gun, actually ended up holding up this construction, that supports his other missing hand (I'll talk more about that one later on >w<).

Next to the shoulder plate I also added another metal strap, since he also thechnically has a nice little construction on his back, that we cannot see from the angle I've chosen, that connects to that.... well, and also most of these pipes filled with essentially this blood-replacement liquid and also is drugged up, so he doesn't feel th pain of his body that's more or less falling apart.

He also has a fucked up face, but since "fucked up face" is long, everyone just says "fuckface" and he sorta deals with it, because he has no real choice.
I also tried my very best to make him look friendly and nice, without all the prosthetics, so that his rather disturbing and freakish appearance, really only originates from the metal stuff I stuck on/in him.

I continued with the trousers, wanting them to be baggy (since he's a Fireforge), and adding a few belts, two of witch are lined with bullets, because he does indeed usually carry a gun around, and they just look too cool to not put them there.
His left leg is completely prosthetic, including his hip and the upper half of his right leg... the only thing visible of that, being some of the hip-torso attachments and a bit of his left leg beneath the trousers.

At this point I wasn't too sure what to do with his other hand, since I imagined him to have replaceable heads that he could screw on there, which is why I left that for now and instead added the first colours.

This was also the moment, in which I remembered that I wanted to try and start recording things for youtube again, soooo..... from now on I think I've recorded everything and will indeed throw a speedpaint at the bottom of the chapter somewhere, if I should actually not be too lazy for editing for once >w<""

But yeah! Fireforge! What does that mean? A lot of orange.

So to keep the cyberpunk vibe, I wanted to go with a strong contrast between black metal and the light neon-orange elements added on top.
I also gave him skin leaning more towards the Ruindîr-spectrum of things, whilst making his eye a orange and yellow.

>>yeets colouring WIP in chapter<<

I finished the flats and then decided to finally do that hand, having settled upon this fun thing with a stabby-thing and two hook-thingies.... makes total sense, but I thought it might be practical when running around a city and trying to kill people, and it was fun to draw and to invision, so.. that's that ^-^

After the other hand was done, I duplicated the layer as usual, also deciding, that I'll just roll with this sketch, since it's clean enough to be used as Lineart and I wouldn't have had enough time to clean up.

So now I was looking at this for the lineart, already loving how this was coming along, since it was precisely how I had it in mind >w<

Next up I turned on the colours again, quickly threw some of the metal-colour on that hand, and then started to add some details, gradients and tonal variations to the skin.

Goal was, to make him look, as though his body was more or less rejecting the "enhancements" everything being a bit sore, his skin ripping up, where the interior changes are, a bit of blood here and there as well as some nice extra multiply-layers of dark-red to really make this look painful.
Also went ahead and added quite some blush, freckles and moles, to play into the fact, that he was indeed, a normal harath being before all of this shit happened to him.

After those first layers were done, I went ahead and added more overall detail on him.

The metal finally got he futuristic, neon patterns, I stood next to him with a spray-bottle filled with blood and had fun, made sure, that he had some sort of darker fade going on in his hair, since the pure neon was a bit too extreme for me, and just overall stuffs like that.

Already seeing how I was running out of time, I now looked at this:

Finally I went ahead and shaded the piece, with about 45 minutes left... I obviously was happy to take as much time after those 5 hours that I needed, but still kinda wanted to finish in time, which is why I slapped a multiply layer on top, erased the lighting, and added a ton of overlays, luminosities ad multiplies over the entire thing, to make that quickly-shaded mess look presentable.

And yeah!

Overall I am extremely happy with the result, thinking how I maybe should try making more pieces with cell-shading, since I am really, really, really digging the qulities of my style that this here is bringing out.

I am rather tired now, so I'll explain his backstory some other time, probably when uploading the chapter with that Bronadan picture that I have in planning.

Have fun with the finished piece :D

And before I end the chapter, here are the references I used for this piece since Celi wanted them all posted as well, to make sure nobody copies stuffs too much.

As we all know, I never use references for entire pieces, since I already have a pretty strong image of what I want in mind, but rather using them for inspiration or a way to help me see how other artists visualised elements that I already had in mind, but still struggled with a lot.

I mainly pull them to hand during the lineart-phase, colouring and shading things always independantly, except in cases (and this piece is one of those) where I attempt to adopt a new shading style and still am too inexperienced to make the piece come to life as it usually would, if I wouldn't just randomly have the idea to throw my rendering techniques in the bin.

All of them are from pinterest, so I have no clue who the original artist is respectively, most of the pieces were also only looked at in a glance, except the one on the right of the last set, which is a screenshot of a video by neytirix, who happened to be the main inspiration for the entire concept of Fuckface. Especially the kneeling dude there was my first starting point of his design.

Welp, that's all from me for today... hope you like the drawing (especially Celi ofc), and maybe stick around for another chapter of mine.

>>yeets speedpaint in chapter<<

https://youtu.be/rM8Zh2C6Ie0

Until we see each other sometime in the future then, I shall bid you all a good night, sleep tight, and try to not let the bed bugs bite, since they seem to be festering around here for no reason and I've heard that some readers got some really gross mutations from them.

>>cuddles you and gives you cookies, blankets, tea, anti-insect spray and a knife (just in case)<<