University Work - Sin of the Flesh

Kuro here with a mass upload of my university coursework.

Finally after 4 months of just being completely busy, I have finished all my coursework and now I can finally upload the finished pieces! As you know from older uploads, I have been working on my own renditions of Guards for the 9 circles of Hell as portrayed in Dante's Inferno.

Basically I'm a big fan of The Divine Comedy, more importantly Dante's Inferno.  I've read the series as well as played the game and watched the Animated Epic.  The game/movie had alot of dark aspects which I found inspiring, especially the seperate circles of hell.  For my Art Project I chose 4 circles to draw; Limbo, Lust, Greed, and Treachery.  This then required me to start researching into each circle, finding references for what I would like to achieve as well as looking through all the official art work for the game.  The first circle I tackled was Limbo; ruled over by the Judge of the Dead King Minos.  He determines which part of hell you go to and he catapults you there for eternal suffering.  A towering giant, he comprises of a snake like body and mutated looking form with even his crown looking organic.  Blind, he smells the sin off the sinners and sends them to their circle.

The second circle I tackled was Lust.  In Dante's Inferno, Lust is ruled over by Cleopatra; a naga goliath who makes lustful souls suffer for eternity.  For my Art Project I decided to do a different take on it and changed the Lust Guard to a Drider based on the Black Widow.

The third circle I tackled was Greed.  In Dante's Inferno, Greed is ruled over by Alieghiero; Dante's greedful father who had been killed when Dante's love was murdered.  For my Art Project I decided to do a different take on it and changed the Greed Guard to a Clockwork Golem; partially inspired by a Golden Humonculus.

The last circle I tackled was Treachery.  In Dante's Inferno, Treachery is ruled over by Lucifer; The very cause of Dante being in Hell, the fallen angel and the ultimate traitor of all.  For my Art Project I decided to do my own rendition of him but keeping his depiction true to the series.

Each picture has my own unique take on it as well as being the first time I have properly shaded in Photoshop.  It was fun because I learned how to do alot of different techniques including utilising textures (most of them were found on google but I do not take credit for them at all!) and Hoshi was kind enough to show me how to make the eyes more piercing (I will be uploading these images soon enough). Here's a step by step of what I did:

1. I drew the sketch on A3 paper with a 2H pencil with a 0.3 mechanical pencil used for detail as well as to darken the lines so they could be later cleaned up in Adobe Photoshop CS 6.

2. They were then scanned into Adobe Photoshop CS3 then transferred to Adobe Photoshop CS6 for clean up which took the longest to do due to have to play around with Levels in the program.

3. Once finished, I started placing all the flat colours down on seperate layers so I knew what had to look dark and so on.  Each palette for the different pictures reflect in some form a colour reflected to the sin.

4. Now for the second longest stage; shading.  Now I was fairly new to using Photoshop as I am mostly a traditional based artist but after some very good tutorials and guidance from Hoshi, I was able to paint each picture with each having their own unique look but still retaining some of my signatures (ie. the fog).

5. Now for Post Production. I proceeded to add textures where I felt it applied as well as coloured some of the lines to soften the look.

6. Export the High Res file without a watermark as a PNG to preserve the transparency, then take it back into photoshop and apply the watermark for online usage. Then with everything done, I can print it and add the finished piece to my portfolio (currently searching for good paper).

And that's everything for my Inferno pictures! Here's hoping I will get good grades!

Art and concepts (c) Bla-St-Productions
Dante's Inferno (c) Dante Alighieri