[mochazombie]

Hello all! This is my first time joining in an art contest... and I'm pretty new to CGHub as well! (I have been lurking, but I guess it took fairy tales to push me to join...)

Anyway, this'll be my take on The Snow Queen, a story I've loved since I was a kid. I wanted to focus on the journey/adventure aspect of the story, how far the heroine goes to find her lost friend and the cool folks she meets along the way (post-apocalyptic bandits, ghostly witches and a very large sentient caribou)

So here's what I've got so far:


really rough thumb of my idea of the final composition


colour sketch of the Snow Queen, the heroine (Gerda, who gives her name to one of the witches in exchange for the location of the Queen's castle) and Kai, her friend who is kidnapped by the Queen




The bandit & the two witches and Bae, the caribou tourbus

Will update this as soon as I have more!

[beaulamb]

nice sketches! looks promicing

[keenho]

very niec characters

[gimaldinov]

Great man! Just great! Waiting for more!

[Moni-Poroni]

Very nice sketches. Best of luck!

[evebolt]

These look really good so far, I'm eager to see more!!

[mochazombie]

Thanks guys!

some updates: I've started fleshing out what will probably be the composition I go with for the final, the background is still a messy joke, but right now it's just there to give me a guide for some interesting space. My plan is to have the wall between the queen and the protagonists covered in ice, with her guardians sort of emerging from it to fight the bandit and the grannies. In the original story they're just evil snowflakes, here I guess they could be her exes, or a look at what would happen to Kai if he stays with the Snow Queen too long! I'm worried about cluttering up the image though, and I was thinking of moving the dark mass of the wall more to the right, so that the queen's staff/arm would stand out more & we'd be able to pick her silhouette up better.

At this stage, any comments & crits would be really appreciated! I'm not used to having a lot of time to sit and think about an image before I'm crushed by a deadline, so I'm simultaneously worried about over-thinking it AND rushing it through!

[boriskauf]

love the caribou elk thingy's design and the ice soldiers sentinels or whatever these blue icy things are

The composition is nice, the witches give a nice sense of depth and it's a good idea to use a reference photo to get the right cathedral look to the place

At this stage I can't say much about the lighting, but the entrance allows some awsome backlighting effects, plus the light hitting the ice (wether it's on the set, the witch, the soldiers,etc..) is perfect for lighting and color reflections and refractions

it's a pretty challenging image, and I can't wait to see the end result

good luck and keep up this awsome work

[mochazombie]

Thanks Boris! I really had fun with the grannies and the ice sentinels XD

[mochazombie]

Update with a colour sketch

I widened it out a bit to give everybody a little more room to breathe and added some really sketchy shadows...

[Nickillus]

Promising start Mochazombie.
The best part for me so far is the postures of the group in the background, and the dropped head of the reindeer thingie in particular. That looks very natural and right. I'm not totally convinced by the poses of the two foreground figures yet, but do understand this is a WIP and you have all sorts of ideas up your sleeve, and a way to go on it.

Looking forward to seeing more.

[mochazombie]

Thanks Nick, you're absolutely right about their poses, something is a little off about them. Had some time to work on them, so I tried to make Kai look more natural and give the queen more authority, hopefully works a bit better this way.

[mochazombie]

Still plugging away at this.... so many things I still want to change, so little time before the deadline!

[Kineko]

Wow, I really love your charadesign and the whole picture is very nice!