"A Hopeless Dream Chaser"
Another year, another attempt at painting Athena Asamiya. This is the third rendition. I’m getting there. Looking at it know, there are a few details that I may come back to, but it’s a huge improvement from the last version.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Still don’t know yet if I will add a proper background to this painting yet. Now that I have it at this point I have some ideas of what is possible, but I wanted to try this rough background out since I liked it on another painting I saw in my references. To go along with the background, I went for a rough painting style on Athena. There were a couple of changes I made to her face and hair. I wonder if you guys can tell? With this design I wanted a fun, moe feel that emphasizes curves.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Way back in 2018 for Inktober day 11 I drew Athena Asamiya which looked really rough. Here is a RE:do of it. This time I went for a softer more curvy style. I made the shorts a bit smaller than the original design (they pull up higher up to he bellybutton), I fixed that on the digital line art.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Day 22. Today’s drawing is of Iori and Athena. I saw this reference photo from a guy that had the same style as Iori and just had to draw it. Apparently its from a show in the 90s. I was going to keep the same actress on Iori’s side, I mean we don’t know how Iori’s ex looks like. And Hosho Mai looks super beautiful in the photo. But ultimately I decided to change it to a King of Fighters character. I chose Athena.
reference:
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
The original version was uploaded back in November 2020, but I feel that it was lacking. I now feel a bit more confident to go back to it and update it with my current skills. Not only did I change some colors but I changed the sleeves and chest area. The background was also touched up. The right eye (what appears to us as the left eye) was drawn too far down the face so Athena looked a bit deformed. Aside from that, I also changed the gaze so it appeared that she was looking at us. I should seriously actually render paintings more, I’ve been leaving them too rough.
Original can be seen here:
Aside from seeing the original piece, you can learn what inspired me for this particular painting.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
This drawing was originally drawn on the second day of Inktober 2020 which can be found here: https://darkcloudxero.com/2020/10/02/inktober-2020-02-athena-asamiya/
When it came to painting Athena I was imagining some colors I had seen in what I think was a promotional video of Sonoko Kawai. But when I was trying to find that video I failed. More than likely it got deleted or it might have been someone else but I’m pretty sure it was Sonoko. This is one of the reasons I have started to just back up any videos that I like and that interest me.
With that option out of the question I remembered I had some JR Christmas commercials that had similar colors to what I wanted. I ended up using the commercial featuring Eri Fukatsu. Getting the skin tone correctly took a couple of tries since I hadn’t used it before. I should definitely play around with such lighting more.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
This time I used inspiration from a photo of Rie Hatada’s single cover. When I saw the color scheme it reminded me of Athena. As for the art style, this time I wanted to use Masakazu Katsura’s (artist of Video Girl Ai). I really like the fusion of realism and the manga illustration style.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
This is the final piece all finally composited together. Making the background sure did take a while. It was all done using Copics. Copics are great but they do have their limitations and require quite a bit of steps in order to have them work the way I want them to. And since covering large areas takes a lot of ink it can be quite an expensive medium. But I wanted to see if I could get a handle on colors and values using nothing but the Copics.
I had to think a good bit about what I wanted the background to be but since I was going for a yanki theme I figured having them in the arcade setting would fit well. I was considering having Athena carrying a bat but decided against that for this one (maybe on another piece sometime in the future). Once I did finish the background I did have to calibrate the colors digitally and also clean up some of the forground objects so that I could place Athena and Miss X behind them. Once I did do that I went ahead and fixed their values so that they fit in with the background and then also added some shadows.
The final piece:
Reference picture used:
Background process:
Digital process:
Hope you guys like it.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Last time I drew Miss X and during the time after that I went ahead and fixed some of the issues I had such as the really small feet and also added some more colors and played around with the values.
I’ve seen some artwork online of Miss X and Athena together as a team, kind of like if they were yankees. So the project will be something based on that.
For Athena’s design I wanted to draw her in her school uniform that has the long skirt so she looks even more like a yankee. So I used her design from King of Fighters 94. I really love Athena’s design and her fighting style. She is actually one of my mains.
This is the final drawing:
These are the references used:
These are screenshots I took from the game.
And these are from the official artworks:
This is the process:
Now all that is left is the background.
That’s it for now.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Started really late so not much time, need to get to sleep soon. But here is a quick drawing of Athena Asamiya from King of Fighters 99′. She was another one of the characters that I really liked/like using.
This is the piece, no shading just the outline this time:
Looks really rough and unfinished, but that’s alright.
I used both these as the references:
Here is the process:
A shame I didn’t finish it, but those are the struggles. I will explain what took so much of my time tomorrow.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
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