After recuperating from the breakneck pace of weekly challenges (after the kangazelle I worked on a piece that I didn't finish) I started again this Saturday with the character of the week. While the past few weeks felt like me flailing about artistically, I wanted my next pieces to have a little more focus. On this particular artwork and likely on the next few that I do I will ignore the backgrounds almost completely. A good background is important in any illustration but I noticed in a lot of concept art, especially that dealing with character or creature design, the background can be minimal to none since the focus is on the design of the character or creature and not illustration (ie telling a complete story via an image). At some point in the future I will certainly spend time specifically working on backgrounds/environments. For now I want to focus on designing and rendering good looking characters.
Anyway, this week's creature of the week challenge on conceptart.org is to design a character out of a chess piece of your choice. I chose a knight since it was conceptually pretty easy. I'd already wanted to draw a Tikbalang at some point in the future and though this knight looks nothing like the idea I had in my head, it will at least help me familiarize myself with fantastical Tikbalang anatomy. The image up top shows the design I ended up with, after spending time thumbnailing (my thumbnails look horrid so I will almost never post them here :P). The horse knight's wearing relatively light armor since his focus is on speed and being able to flank his enemy (hence the L-shape of the knight's attack pattern in chess). Since he's a knight I gave him a lance and a special shield that he uses to help prop up the lance. The shield also comes with a long knife attached to it in the back since the lance will splinter upon impact and he'll need a backup weapon to fend enemies off till he or his squire gets another lance.
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