The Making of 2D Art War 4 Finalist: Mr.Blue

Dario Jelusic is an illustrator and concept artist currently working in the games industry. After finishing university for electrical engineering, he decided he wanted to go back to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an illustrator.

After a lot of hard work, he landed his first job in a game studio a few years later. He is a self-described self-thought artist driven by constant urge to learn and create something new.

Here is his character: Mr.Blue

Mind-set and Storytelling

Before I jump into talking about my process and how I got to the final image I would like to reserve first part of the tutorial for something I find really important and that is mind-set.

I will not go deep into it rather I will highlight few of the things that help me stay focused and on top of my game during long projects with lots of additional assets.

The goal for the challenge was to create one final illustration showing your hero in dynamic action pose and there were no additional assets we needed to create. But, since this is a challenge and I always want to challenge myself even further I decided to add few more tasks. Meaning, pushing myself out of the comfort zone.

I believe we learn the most when outside of our comfort zone.

The point of every challenge should be pushing yourself to your limits to see how far you can go. Even if I fail I'll learn so much more than I would compared to any task done completely within comfort zone.

Planning and thinking in advance is one more thing that I find quite important and goes hand in hand with being outside of your comfort zone. Put your schedule down on paper and follow it. It's not easy having 9 to 5 job, daily chores and other things to attend to, but by having it planned out you should be able to find that extra hour a day that can make all the difference. And don't be hard on yourself if you are not able to do it every day. It's ok to rest here and there just to balance everything out.

I believe storytelling is the most important thing when it comes to illustration and concept art. Before I started with the challenge I spent few days thinking not just what I am going to present but what is story behind it. I had bunch of ideas and all of them contributed to Mr.Blue coming to life. And with all those ideas I tried thinking outside of the box and came up with something new. Not only story about Mr.Blue came to be but also the world in which he lives and even political turbulences within it. All of those can be seen or read in some form in the final piece and accompanying designs.

When it comes to presentation of the final piece. I didn't want to show only Mr.Blue in a cool pose but I wanted to add as many things as I could while still having coherent composition with enough interest and resting places for viewer to enjoy.

Process

I went all in with number of assets I wanted to create. Well, it's a challenge after all.

Mr.Blue (character) design
Perun's Hand (prop) design
Perun's Hand blueprint (storytelling, functionality and prop) design
Mr. Blue attacks (gameplay elements and character) design
Daily Hare (storytelling and prop) design
Assault on the Institute illustration

For all of them my workflow is essentially the same. I will be talking about final illustration here but this workflow can be applied to any other task or project.

I. Rough Sketch Phase

Here I will go really rough with brush strokes and ideas. I do not try to make anything pretty and well designed. What I want to do here is limit myself to think just about one thing and that is composition.

II. Line Work

After initial rough idea I will lower the transparency of it and on the layer above I'll add tighter line work. In this phase my main concern is design and adding as much information about the image I can. Meaning, I am making biggest decisions in this and previous phase. I am doing that so I do not need to think about it later on.

III. Block Out

As the name suggests in this phase I will add basic color and light information. Also I will organize my PSD so I have full control of each asset within it. Meaning, I’ll have background, mid-ground, foreground and all the characters and props on separate layers. In this phase I do not think about the composition or any design elements as I already did that in previous two phases, rather I am working in such a way that will help me have easier time later on.

IV. Rendering

Now it's time for fun part. Diving in and rendering everything. In this phase I will be doing changes to the design of the characters, adding colors and update some composition elements. Nothing is set in stone rather everything before this is used as a frame to have easier time later on and to save as much time as possible (which is really important when you are part of the game pipeline). It's worth noting that nothing big will be changed just small things that will help tighten composition and design bit more.

V. Final

Final stage of my workflow. Here is all about having fun and continuing with rendering. I usually go all in with the details because I love looking at other people’s art and trying to find all the hidden little things that artist might have put in. I will be also adding all kinds of special effects and secondary/tertiary light information. Also, this is phase which last the longest and I am just going along with it to the finish line.

Attack on the Institute – Final Illustration

As you can see with this workflow I am trying to mitigate as much issues as possible at the beginning and I am concentrating at one thing at the time while being focused on initial vision of the illustration I had. Also, I am in control of my process from beginning until the end which gives me more self confidence that I can finish the project no matter how complex it may be.

Here are additional designs I did as part of the challenge: