The Bust: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Owen Daniels (2018)

The story my character is based off of is my english short story. My story involves two task force agents raiding a building. The character is based off a rough task force agent, who is trying to rescue a young girl. In desperation, this character captures a guard, and tries to interrogate him.

My character, being a special agent, had 3 major character traits that I wanted to emphasize. I wanted to emphasize cleverness, strength, and stealthiness. The animals I chose were a crow, representing cleverness, a gorilla representing strength, and a snake representing stealthiness. I started this illustration with very basic lined sketches, in order to shape the layout of my piece. I had each different sketch line colored, as to better organize myself in preparation for my final piece. I wanted my character to be in a dynamic pose, so I had them stuck in mid punch. I also wanted to have my character utilizing some of their animal traits, so I made the lower half of my character a snake and had him constrict his foe. After I was content with the poses, I started drawing the basic lines and after that, I moved on to color. I created my character mainly with the brush tool, then I rasterized the entire character, making them a shape for easy printing. After completing my character, I moved on to the background, which I wanted to be a grim, prison-like Interrogation room. I made the room a very dark gray, then I added a slight gradient on the walls and floors to create a sense of depth. I then my primary light source, the lamp where a beam of light comes out from it. To execute this, I made a light yellow trapezoid, lowered its visibility, and put it over all my layers.