AotP: Finalizing Hense, Garmuth

Previously on Art of the Pantheon:
Introduction, Concepts, Original Sketches
Hense Take 2, Design Guidelines
Hense Take 3 (with hood designs), Lemaign
Garmuth, a bit more Hense
More Garmuth, Roathus
Slimmer Hense, Hense Color, Windbags (Lore and Pictures)
Micia, the Lorn Mother
Colorful Forms (Hense, Jevel, Roathus, Micia, Garmuth) 
Olak Take 2

Okay now, when I say "finalizing," that doesn't mean the design won't shift, as I'm sure it will. However, I've reached a point with these two that I can firmly say I'm happy with how they look, and did more complete drawings of each of them. I'll start with the pencil works I have laying here. By the way, everything in today's update was scanned in instead of cell phone photo'd like usual since I had the scanner out and hooked up already.

I'll start with Garmuth here. This is a doodle of him, in all his glory, with the mirror added in. I kinda made the mirror design up off the top of my head, incorporating various elements I remembered from the true design (such as the "wing" and the jewel) but not going with a reference, and I like the result.

Basically, THIS is what I want the final Garmuth pic to look like, just with some refinement. Scanner lost some detail on him unfortunately, but it's mostly conveyed.

This is Hense from the side. I did a pair of doodles of this angle back when designing the hood, so I figured I'd revisit it. The slimmed down head and body looks much more natural, and I bunched in up at the back a bit since I liked how that looks (plus it makes a bit more sense for why it doesn't fall off her). The veil is slightly misshapen, but only slightly. I didn't shade the robes black like usual since I didn't want them to be the focus here.

Of special interest is the flames on the hood - note their locations and patterns, because this has become more and more consistently the design I've placed on the hood. While it DOES shift around a bit, this is about what I want it to be usually.






And that brings us to my big piece today.

 HELL. YES. Okay, so I did a fairly large sketch of Hense, taking about 1/4 of a standard sheet of paper, and then went back and used my Sharpies to ink it. I scanned it in and digitally messed with it a bit on the very fine level to clean some lines. I'm very very very happy with this. Seriously, it does everything I want it to - even the eyes smile a bit, though I've mostly given up on making that work to a large degree. I think it reminds me a lot of Persepolis what with the very covered look and the black & white.  Now let's look at the variations. Click them for a real look.

Okay, so here's a variation  that added another tone for shadowed areas and the not-so-bright flames. I like it, not sure if more than the basic, but still quite a bit.

And this is the original scanned image. Just thought you might be interested in seeing it so you know how much work came digitally.

And this is the same final image as above but with the original plain white background, just in case I majorly screwed up the transparency again.










So that's it! This Hense design is definitely what I want to move forward with, and this Persepolis-looking image isn't even half bad as a final!

Oh, and guess what? I'm done with my freshman year of university!
This Week: Battleship, AotP, D&D Next annotations(excited!), DW 2.3 notes
Next Week: Men in Black III maybe, AotP, D&D Next, Binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb review.
June: Songaday! YES I'm doing another round. Also, June 15-22 is the TheSpeedGamers Pokemon marathon, and June 5-7 is E3. June 29-31 is Go Play NW, so I'll have con stuff.
Stars Without Number: If you're wondering where this went, this will probably be a more project-style posting. Deciding how I want it to interact with AotP and June Songaday (catchier name suggestions? Oh! Midsummer Songaday maybe!), so dates are TBA.