Draconissa: An Original Character I created for Splinterlands Art Contest!

Splinterlands Art Contest!

Hello guys, I hope everyone is having a great day. As for me it's night time here and I'm posting this now because I want to post my entry before the deadline and I really hope I'm not late for this week's contest. My entry for this week is special because it's an Original Character I made for this contest after a long time. Back when I was consistently posting OCs, I wished that I could make one in a tablet. My wish came true because of hive and I got a tab last month and it's been fun ever since hehe.

Coming to the creation process I wanted to create a character from a splinter I haven't used before for my previous Splinterlands OCs. The dragon splinter instantly came to mind and I did some brainstorming about it before creating the rough sketch. It was challenging but at the same time it was also rewarding after seeing the results.

Draconissa Drako (Original Character)

Character Information

Draconissa is a summoner belonging to the Dragon splinter who has the ability to summon ancient legendary dragons into battle. Her body is infused with dragon blood which gives her the power to command and control dragons at will. This human-dragon blood fusion caused a rare mutation in her body which makes it possible for her to transform into a dragon as a last resort in battle.

In human/hybrid form, her physical attributes like strength, eyesight and speed is significantly higher than that of a average superhuman. This form also allows her to activate one unique ability called the "Dragon vison" which reveals weakness of the opponents enabling her to achieve victory even in a short amount of time. The longer this ability is used, higher the mana drain.

When things get out of control she can transform herself into a fully grown dragon and go full offensive mode. However transformation requires significant energy and time to complete which can make her vulnerable and open to attacks but if the transformation is completed without interruption she gains all the abilities of a dragon while retaining her better human mind making her an incredible opponent to beat. In addition to that Dragon vision no longer requires mana to function for longer periods.

Draconiss shows weakness to splinters who can siphon mana using magic spells. Water and poison are also showing signs of weakness in her but she is only weakened by water in her dragon form and poison will only work on her in her normal state.

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The process...

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✨Result ✨

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Short Explanation

I wanted to draw this in a perspective style because the pose they often make is very cool. I found an interesting pose from Pose Archives on Pinterest. After making a rough sketch on paper I used this pose as a base for adding dragon styled accesories on her body. Took me some time to complete this since there was no reference to use this time since I'm creating an OC. After an hour or two I finished sketching and imported it into Ibis paint x. I decided that it's better to tilt it to the right before drawing the lineart.

After making the lineart I started painting the face and rendered it as well. Once I figured out which colour tone was best for her skin I painted the rest of the skin with the same palette as well. Then I painted the eyes in blue because red and blue are complimentary as I was planning to paint the hair and other accessories in red as well so it will look good together.

I had to reignite my creative side for creating those accesories. I just played with some potential concepts and this is the one that made it into the final design. I'm talking about the dragon winged crown here hehe. It is part metal and part organic so I painted them accordingly. I decided to ditch th lineart for the metalic part to make it look realistic. I told you guys last time I found some tutorials on Pinterest. I studied that to create this here hehe.

I moved to render other areas of the body once the head was fully rendered. The palm with the dragon eyes gave me some trouble. I never painted anything close this realistic before so it took a while to complete. I think I was working on this for hours XD. Joining dragon skin to human skin is tough haha. I need to improve this area next time. I'm sure I'll find some tutorials online.

I was thinking about creating some medieval pants for her but ditched that idea because it didn't suit with the rest of the design so instead of that I gave her red armour on her thighs. Ah yes, more metallic surface to work on haha. The background was made by adding th character in an overlay mode after applying a Gaussian blur. Since she is from the dragon splinter I had to add flames around her but I made the shape of the flame like the head of a dragon. I didn't make it too obvious though. I wanted more focus attention on her so I applied a light blur on it as well.

After that I fixed up some anatomy errors on the face and refined the artwork before posting here. This took a lot of time and I finished it after 4 days I think but not continuously. I hope you guys enjoyed the process hehe and I'll see you next week ;)

By the way, am I the only one making the Original Character entries? I love to see some original character entries from the contestants as well in the future. I'm interested in seeing where your creativity takes you 😁. I'm more interested in how you connect it to the game hehe.

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Tools used: Ibis paint x, Notebook and Pencil

Duration: 15hrs

Pose reference source

Dragon eye reference source

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Thank you so much for your time and I hope I can make more OCs in the future 😋