GameArt Spotlight #26
"Flawless" by Thomas Miller
Image details
- Title: Flawless
- Gallery ID: 00594
- Artist name: Thomas Miller
- Posting date: 1999-06-15 (a Tuesday)
- Artist website: http://pages.preferred.com/~smdragon
- Tags: Mortal, Kombat, 4, mk, chinese, fight, flash, drawn
- Image size: 64.56 KB
- Votes: 25
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Spotlight article
This picture started out the same as all of my work... with several pencil sketches. I do lots of thumbnails and detail sketches to get the composition and pose down. I then scan them and piece together the parts I like the best to get a rough image.
![](/files_gameart/spotlight/spotlight26a.jpg)
Once that's done, I clean it up a bit and do more detailed drawings where they are needed. I usually use PhotoShop for this step, but any art program will do since I would be painting over all of it. Once I had the B&W sketch, I did grayscale tests to see where I wanted the light direction to be, and where shadows would fall. Then I put them into PhotoShop and make a layer of solid black. All other layers are built on top of it.
I like to work from the darkest shadows to the lightest parts. I have the entire scene lit from the bolt of lightning, then I have a secondary light coming from Raiden's other hand. I have the different lights on separate layers so that when you turn off a layer, it looks like you've turned off the light. This makes it easier to control what the light is hitting and fix mistakes later.
I started with Raiden's face and hands because they would have the most detail. Then I did his clothes and straw-hat building up from the darkest colors to the lightest. Finally I added the lighting and sparks on the other hand.
Now that I had the lighting well established, I worked on the fallen warriors that are thrown about in Raiden's wake. I chose characters from MK4 for their cool outfits and colors. I colored then the same way as Raiden - from dark to light using the bolt as the main light source.
![](/files_gameart/spotlight/spotlight26b.jpg)
The scenery and background were done last. I went through alot of web-sites looking at the screenshots from all the MK games to choose a Zone. The one I chose came from MK2 I think. The whole area is lit by the lightning. Where the lightning strikes the ground I made the rock and ground beneath Raiden's feet superheated. Lastly I erased away the shadows on the zone layer for Raiden and the unfortunate victims. Now the picture is nearly finished. The last thing I do is adjust colors and contrasts on the layers so the overall colors would match, and add symbols to the outfits.
![](/files_gameart/spotlight/spotlight26c.jpg)
That's it! Then it was off to the print shop. This picture when printed was almost the size of a door! I hope this step-by-step was helpful, and I hope you all enjoy the picture.
Text written by Thomas Miller for GameArt.com