Justin Gerard

"Eye of the Beholder" Dungeon Master Illustration and Animatic Hi-Res

Added 2024-03-23 12:29:47 +0000 UTC

Today, I have a hi-res final for you for the Beholder image we have been working on all month! The drawing for this one went very smoothly, ...but the illustration process was quite chaotic!

Rather than try to explain how messy the painting was, I decided to make an animatic, to see for myself how it went. (forgive the colors, it's but a humble GIF!)

Overall, I really like where it ended up, it just took longer than expected! The truth is that I listened too long to the siren song of Hard Light layers in Photoshop, and these areas ultimately ended up needing to be repainted several times. (The lesson here is that Soft Light and Multiply are the one true path, and all others lead to destruction!)

You can see the messy chaos especially in the back and forth on the Beholder face, where I lost my mind for a day or so. Overall though, once I finally tossed the Hard Light mode and got back to basics, I really enjoyed how it turned out. I am really pleased with both the painting itself and the lessons learned here.