"Desert Jelly" Berix's delivery

"Desert Jelly"

 This old digital art piece was done a long long time back; for whatever reason I made it, I'm not sure, but felt it needed an extra pop. 

 The original image, (see bottom of this post) was made as a gag. You may not be able to tell, but the character in this image is suppose to be Berix, holding a jar of jelly. Why he's holding a jar of jelly and standing in the middle of the desert is beyond me.

I remember I made this piece when sharing my art online for the first time....and if I'm remembering clearly, made this picture to share on some LEGO group. Didn't get much feed back, but it was my first time sharing something art related on a website with other Bionicle fans.

The original "story" behind this scene was sort of a snippet of Berix stopping in his tracks with a jar of jelly that may or may not have been stolen. I made the art piece while the Bionicle series was still unraveling, and therefore didn't know whether or not Berix was a thief.

Seeing that he ended up not being a thief, I thought of a funnier scenario as to why he was caught in the middle of the desert with a jar of food.

Berix happened to get a hold of a foreign jar of cranberry sauce which Pearllight gave to him. His intention, to rush across the desert with hopes of making it in time for the Thanks Giving dinner Mata Nui was holding in a small home somewhere in Tesera. (Connection image and aftermath here Bionicle Thanks Giving ) Berix heard that cranberry sauce was some kind of "special" Human food which made bird meat and stuffing taste magical. :P So he asked Pearllight for a jar he wished to give to Mata Nui as a gift of appreciation and thanks. 

With that little story, we get our final "Desert Jelly" picture. You may wonder if Berix makes it in time, the answer is yes, but he's hiding under the table so you can't see him (when in reality he was never included in the photo. XD)

Improved sky version

Deatails:

Here's what I did to improve and make "Desert Jelly"

I started with my original image, cut away the existing background, then used two different colored gradients to get a sunset sky. 

First I made a purple colored gradient and leveled it with my horizon, then added a pale yellow gradient over the purple, and adjusted transparency, 

so the under color Gradient would show through. This resulted with the left image above. I left the main clouds and made sure the sky color matched them; (gradients for sunset images are a new discovery for me, and they're great!)

Once I got my sunset sky, I felt the image needed extra; it seemed to be lacking life. So I went in and played with some texture brushes to add extra clouds to the background. This helped to add more depth to the image, and gave it that extra flair I was going for. 

Original image

During the making time of my original "Desert Jelly" image; I remember starting with the torso first of my figure, and tried drawing Berix from memory. His head came out a bit small, but none the less I did what I could at the time. 

 I'll also note that I made the clouds a sunset color, but used shades which would match the jelly in Berix's hand. Come to think of it, the clouds themselves have tones that remind me of Thanks Giving food, a funny coincidence I guess. ^.^