Armored Lionoid

THE STORY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the time of this upload, I have been practicing digitally for the past few months. It was like treading new worlds, and it has been pretty fun. After completing my "Beetle Queen" concept sketch ([link], I wanted to do more character sketches to practice a bit before drawing more characters for a concept project later on. This character I drew was completely random, though somewhat inspired by an armor from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and some concept art for Guild Wars. The person wearing the armor is something like a Khajiit from Skyrim, but with a somewhat goat-like face only because I tried to draw the face of a big cat from memory... The armor design is rather ugly to be honest, but it served as a great way to practice coloring an object that was incredibly segmented.

THE SKETCH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The render was done in Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended, while the initial line sketch was completed by hand. I used a Wacom Graphire4 tablet for the coloring. I wanted to stay with warm colors for this sketch, so his armor is a brownish tint, a bit worn from fighting and walking through sandstorms. His cape was originally clean and well-tapered, but I decided to give it a worn, unwoven look at the ends. When first starting this sketch, it felt incredibly intimidating. The "Beetle Queen" was tough enough at first, but then it got a bit easier. This sketch got easier as well, but it also was tedious because of the multiple pieces of the armor. Honestly, I may need to do a lot better than this if I wish to do this stuff for a living. I may need to increase the details and color depth a bit more. Also, I need to work on speed. This whole render took a while to complete, maybe about a good six hours...

FINAL WORDS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One thing I really love about Photoshop is the ability to change color for a whole entire area in just a few mouse clicks. Now, the above image is the original, but when I was about finished, I messed around with Photoshop's features by selecting the layer with the main armor, and changing its color tone. I changed it to a bluish silver steel color that went very well with the red cape, but I wanted to keep the overall color tone warm, so I just kept the original look. I could always just change it again in just a few minutes.