Bionic Home

I've been visiting old digital sketches in my Bionicle files and tweaking them, then adding some color. This one is a Bionic home, a place that may be a manor for Matoran. Either it serves an inn, or a place of schooling for learning different art forms and sciences. It has a greenhouse, observatory tower, and large library. The Garage was crafted to look like a mask with mouth door and eye windows.

I did adjustments mostly for the background, mainly the trees, rocks, plants, and sky.

It's not often I do cloudy light settings, so this one was a first. It kind of just happened unintentionally, and I liked it. 

 

The black and white sketch was done a long time ago, I don't even remember the year. 

Bala and Bota

Bala and Bota, two more old digital sketches tweaked, colored, and given an environment.

I had named Bala soon after sketching her so long ago. It was just some random name that kind of grew on me and just felt appropriate for her. 

Now Bota, the red guy, was a completely different sketch who needed part of his head and lower legs drawn in. He took a bit more work to make whole, unlike Bala who only needed half her feet drawn in.

Before and after view of the sketches (left). Top row is before, bottom is after.

The adjustments were easy enough, and then came coloring, followed by creating a background. 

Bala has a favorite meditation spot, a large rock within a pool of water leading out to a river, complete with a relaxing waterfall.

Bota is from the volcanic village which isn't far from there, you can even see the volcano in the background. He likes to talk with Bala sometimes, and knows she can commonly be found at the waterfall.

Making the background was fun, but also kind of hard. I struggled to decide what colors to use and how to make the lighting decent. It took me more time and thought than the background I had done previously for another old sketch Citrus Toa-To the Trail. 

Citrus Toa- To the Trail

"Follow the trail."

The Citrus Toa needed a background after so many years of being a quickly colored sketch in my cluster of random Bionicle sketches.

I wasn't sure what the background should be for the drawing, and went on gut instinct, randomly slapping down lines and creating an environment that made me happy. I also had to add a bit more toe to my Toa's foot so he would look right in a scene. Quite a few of my sketches involve drawn figures with part of their feet or lower leg extending out of frame. That's fine sometimes, but other times it doesn't do justice for an illustration, hence me making tweaks to an old sketch.

Obviously this Toa is based off Lewa Phantoka, quite possibly just a different rendition of him on a day the adaptive armor adjusts itself for a new mission.

I call him the citrus Toa because I colored him with a lime and orange color scheme. No doubt during the time of coloring him, I was basing him off of what my Lewa figurine looked like with temporary orange arms. I had given him those arms while waiting a long time to replace his cracked green arm pieces. 

You can see the example of that on the left. Orange and green aren't terrible together as long as the shades are right.

The beach scene itself can stand alone, and makes me feel so relaxed that I could stare at it all day. I wasn't sure which version I preferred as a background, the one with outline (left) or without outline (right). Both are pleasing in some way, but I did keep the outlines in one version to see if my Toa figure would look natural with the backdrop.

The character was after all a cut and paste object who then had a scene built around him. I sketched out an environment first, then painted within the lines, adding color, lighting, and texture where needed. Parts of the scene were only half colored wherever you wouldn't be seeing it (anything hidden behind the foreground figure).

I did set my character on both versions of the background to test which one he looked best on. Outlined version seems to imply he's part of the environment, while the painted version makes him stand out more as a focal point.

All I know is that I want to go to the beach now. :P