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If you are like me and love to hoard high quality reference images, here are a few face references I took in game today for my portrait drawing challenge.

This are enhanced by high definition textures, so they also offer increased clarity in terms of over detail if ya wanna include that in your paintings or drawings.

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The MASS EFFECT face challenge!

While making my Mordin studies I thought to myself.

This is a pretty neat style I have going on here while a little unrefined, but what if I branch out and draw all of the main characters I love in portrait form as part of a drawing challenge? It will give me the chance to really dig in and study all these characters in detail.

So that is what i’m gonna do! My self imposed challenge to draw portraits of all my favourite characters begins soon after I gather my references :D

My first subject will be Admiral Anderson.

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Meanwhile...

Rendering old solus wip… Kinda dug myself into a hole by drawing in all that detail I now have to render between well, but the end result should be lovely once done.

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On the subject of maturity and the feeling of having "grown up"

You know when you look around tumblr and you see all these posts, all saying they have either matured or grown up so much and these are like people only in what... like their 20's or 30's?

I mean hold your horses guys and gals there is plenty more life to live out ya know? Calm down haha, just because you are paying your taxes, goin to work and stuff does not mean ya grown up or matured.

It is a lot more complicated than that, like... wayyyyyyyyyy more complicated than that.

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Young and old! :D

Man... I really feel like I’m getting just a little closer to how I want him to appear in my fan romance comic ;w;

Still a long way to go! 

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Mordin is Spock from STAR TREK.

If he was CRAZYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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A model of scientist Salarian for my good friend @beyonddarkspacearts

A couple of mistakes here and there, more noticeably,lack of signature scars,but i’m proud of it regardless! 

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He’s sooooo cutie :D

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“Imagination” and drawing.

From @blueboxness

“Your wrapping lines are always so spot on - all of the creases around the eye really make it show here. It’s particularly difficult when drawing from imagination for me. Any friendly advice/tips you may have?”

Drawing from the imagination is the easiest thing a guy or gal can do, it need only require a strong visual library. Inspirations, time and a basic understanding of how to draw. Even as a kid I was drawing from the “Imagination”.

Look at references, use weird shape combinations, lightly sketch down nonsense on a page and then build directly ontop of that to discover an idea and expand upon it like crazy!.

I look around tumblr, Devi, Artstation and see “imaginative” drawing all around me but really its more accurate to call it transformative as none of this stuff was ever original, just changed or reinterpreted. Original landscapes pulled straight from blade runner, original species and characters inspired directly from existing characters like salarians, turians, greys, xenos you name it.

You live with/absorb pop media and just art in general, or look around the world you inhabit long enough this internal library of visual information piles up and can be turned into anything and everything you want.

As a 10 year old kid I was heavily inspired by Half Life’s Vortigant’s. That distinct visual signature and head shape directly translated to an original character and species I created.

This is what imagination is. It is not pure creativity, it is conscious or unconscious transformation and re interpretation of everything you see and experience in the world turned into “original” things. Anyone who tells ya they can draw from complete imagination with no reference or experience is just lying to ya! haha

My art mentor is one of the most skilled and famous illustrators and comic book artists in the UK and he trained his abilities by doing studies of existing art! :D

Just use your drawings skills with this in mind and you are set! This is no super power.

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Work doodles while waiting for code to finish running.

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This foundations is excellence right here! 

Well done! Had it been in pencils I would lightly rub this down to fade it and then do my inked lineart ontop or further enhance with more refined pencil work :D

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MUST PACK IN EXCESSIVE AMOUNTS OF DETAIL! GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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THIS BLOODY DESIGN IS SO BLOODY TERRIFYING, YOU MADE ONE OF MY OWN UGLIEST CHARACTERS RECOIL IN TERROR!

I will admit I'm not exactly a huge fan of sonic, especially nowadays lol.

But as a child I have played several of the franchise’s best games across the Gameboy, Dreamcast and Gamecube gaming consoles. That is more than enough content and time spent with this popular gaming franchise to be able to see what a fuckin travesty this abomination of creation is.

Who greenlights this shit man? 

That design is so unsettling to me that I think I can distinctly remember a nightmare that featured something visually similar to this.

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Before the genophage modification, before the scars, wounds, mobility assisting exoskeletons and STG.

There was once a young, idealistic, intelligent, innocent and hopeful student of science, medicine and technology. 

His name was Mordin Solus.

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Really basic, flat colours test.

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The principle subject is mostly complete! :D

Obviously there's the texturing and stuff to apply, but i’m super happy with how he looks here. Below is a comparison between the original and my re interpretive study. The head could of been better though so if need be I may redraw it.

My next set of hurdles to study is the background creation and the visual effects described in the examination. I also have to draw the dead krogan he stands on.

Light beams, glowing tech flames, glow on rim lights I gotta figure out how all of this works then make it all exact in that regard... Even the bloody speech bubbles and captions need to be the exact same.

Long way to go!

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That's pretty cool.

Mordin has some lovely naturalistic asymmetry in his design.

Took a look at the proportions and relationships between both sides of his face in non perspective model images and in perspective images in game. The designers actually employed a little distortion and proportional slanting to make his design look all the more natural. Something you can see in nature aswell.

I recommended you all take a passport photo style selfie of yourself then flip/mirror the image horizontally on your phone or computer etc.

You will giggle at just how imperfect and crooked all your weird, pretty or “ugly” faces actually look lol.

Not even the handsome Ryan Gosling can escape asymmetry! muhahahaha!

Perfect symmetry in nature is completely impossible and you only get rare instances of the appearance of perfect symmetry in lucky peoples faces. Like with magazine models etc, but even then those images you see in magazines are heavily touched up in photoshop. Its really cool to see Bioware putting that “imperfection” in their designs here.

What i’m basically saying is you are all...

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Alrighty i’m actually REALLY liking how this is slowly turning out.

My mentor was right! This is a fantastic way to learn, the act of taking an existing piece of art and trying your best to really observe and break it down to its essential parts then build back up from there is fascinating and i’m learning a lot from it. More so than grinding on a single subject of study at a time.

Its like getting into the artists head and rebuilding a recording of how he or she did things without actually watching them do it. With this kind of study and can literally look at any piece of art, and imprint the style in my mind and try it myself.

I can wait to learn how to recreate that background etc once the primary subject here is fully realised. After not being able to find the brush I was looking for I just manually created the splatter effect with the brush I was using, employed stippling which is something I learned traditionally.

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Ok the Inks have begun, working from torso outwards. Once this is done I gotta find some good paint splatter brushes or make them myself in the brush creator within photoshop itself, to create that stylistic texturing on black surfaces.

Heres an example.

As you can see the linear lineart and black ink shading was done first then the splatter brush most likely in eraser mode was flicked on the surfaces to break everything up.

Heres an example of that same area in my study, I have not yet applied the splatter texture effects on my inks so everything is much more clean looking.

I’m trying to be as faithful to the original images lineart style while giving it a slight re interpretive spin.

ONWARDS!