Viera Dragoon Stardiver

This was one of the commissioned paintings that I lost when my hard drive failed on me.

I didn't back up any of my other files, and I spent 7 painful days trying to recover them. This was one of those that I lost

You have no idea how much I freaked out back then...

I basically had to redo it almost from scratch, with a low res JPEG as a reference...

One tip when it comes to posing characters in dynamic perspectives : make sure the silhouette reads very quickly! And also, eliminate as much noise as possible from the background to help give the character clarity

The Stardiver skill is beautiful... But messy. It's dark AND bright at the same time, which was a tough balance to strike. But that gives me an excuse to create lighting that's similar to film explosions

I attached the screenshots I used as refs for the character, as well as the 3d model I made in Blender for the spell effects.