Here’s a digital coloring in Procreate of a pencil drawing I did last year. I just wanted to have fun learning Procreate.
Warrior Woman Digital Colors in Procreate By Ralph Contreras
Coloring Adventures in Procreate with Green Haired Warrior Woman
I finally got the opportunity to mess around with Procreate. I bought an iPad this weekend, and the first app I bought was Procreate. I’m really excited to use it for digital illustrations. Or for coloring some of my older pencil illustrations.
Here’s a digital coloring in Procreate of a pencil drawing I did last year. The drawing is of Warrior Woman, Scarmother Vrynna from Legends of Runeterra. I found the image reference on Pinterest and really wanted to draw her in my sketchbook. Check it out in this blog post.
The colors I chose aren’t like the original illustration. I just wanted to have fun learning Procreate, so I gave her green hair. I tried blending the colors and added shadow and highlight. I am really enjoying Procreate and can’t believe it’s taken me so long to use it.
Character Back Story: Like most fighters of the pit, nothing is known about Alcatraz’s past. What his real name is, where he was born, and who his family is. He ended up in the pit as most fighters do. At some point, he was abducted from his former life and injected into this dark underworld. The need is high for new recruits since fights often end with death. The life expectancy of a pit fighter is a little over a month. New recruits go through reconditions and rebuilding. First, their minds are erased, they become blank slates ready to be programmed to fight. To only care about fighting and winning. There are several managers (big bosses) that recruit, train, and house these fighters. Alcatraz fights for Boss Holiday.
Unlike most fighters in the pit who only dream of fighting and winning, Alcatraz dreams of escaping. To escape this violent world he knows he needs to survive the fights. This means he has to be smarter, tougher, stronger, and more lethal than his opponents. For him winning is living. Living for the next day, living to be free. He’s heard rumors that if you survive long enough, the “Boss” will take you out of the fights. Give you another job as one of his enforcers. Enforcing what, he doesn’t know. But he believes it has to be better than fighting every day to death.
When Alcatraz first started in the pits there was a top fighter named “Concrete Stain”, an undefeated fighter who had survived over a year. Then one day he was gone, not dead from a fight just gone. That’s when Alcatraz first heard the rumor. That elite fighters work for Boss Holiday on the outside, not just fighting for him in the pits. It might only be a dream but Alcatraz will keep surviving until he’s chosen until he’s free.
Notes: I mentioned Boss Holiday in Alcatraz’s back story. He’s a character I created for the first 30 Characters Challenge. A Rockabilly Crime lord who employs “Super-Villains”
Character Back Story: A rouge asteroid hit and destroyed the planet Azari Prime, home of the Dra’Azari Royal Family. The Royal family and the planet’s inhabitants mounted a vast interstellar survival plan. Financed by the Royal family and all the resources of Azari, 20 ark space ships were created. The survivors would travel to Azari-3, a colony on the outskirts of their solar system. Azari-3 rich with natural resources would be their new home world. The Royal family created their own ship for the voyage, it was to carry their entire Dra’Azari Family. Guardian Droids were built and placed in all ark ships, also named GD-Units. Their primary functions and programming were to care for the needs of the ark passengers. These droids would maintain the ships, cook, clean, and educate. On the Royals ship, there were 8 GD-Units.
Ezbeet Dra’Book (Ezbeet equaling to a Duke in Earth terms) sees this migration as a great opportunity to rise higher in the family court. He reprograms the Guardian Droids on the Royal’s Ark to turn on the family and kill them all. In the middle of the mayhem, Dra’Book sabotages all the escape pods and uses the only functional one to escape. The GD-Units manage to slaughter almost everyone on the ship within hours. A few of the royalty manage to survive the attack in the children’s nursery, including Ezbeet Dra’Hexra. Dra’Hexra uses the ship’s computer to reset one of the Guardian Droids, GD-Unit 5.
As a result of the reset, GD-Unit 5 malfunctions merging both its origin programming with that of Dra’Book. It believes that it must educate and protect the Royal family by eliminating it. It quickly destroys the other Guardian Droids to protect the survivors. GD-Unit 5 then gathers the remaining Royalty including the children. GD-Unit 5 explains that it must protect the Dra’Azari Royal Family. It then attacks them, killing everyone except the 6 youngest. It has calculated that it must educate, train, and manipulate these six children to be the new leader of the Azari people.
In the chaos of the GD-Units attack, the Royalty’s ark ship was sent severely off course. Years pass by and the children become adults, they began calling the Guardian Droid, Dra’Zun. “Dra” for their family name and “Zun” means teacher. In the years that have passed Dra’Zun has taught his students to be ruthless, calculating, and unforgiving in all matters. It has also manipulated their genetic code to enhance their strength, durability, speed, and intelligence. Dra’Zun’s final lesson will be to have his students fight and kill each other until the strongest and most intelligent one survives. This “Winner” will be the rightful ruler of the Azari people. He or she will begin by conquering small worlds to build an army, then take back the kingdom. Dra’Zun plans to remain as this true ruler’s faithful servant.
Aurora Light – Character Design for The REPLICANTS Project
The idea of Aurora Light came from a challenge to create a superhero team based on an existing team. The REPLICANTS Project was created by Dean Rivet. The inspiration for Aurora Light came from Wonder Woman. What I did was look at what makes Wonder Woman a cool character. She has a rich history centered around Greek mythology. She’s an amazon warrior for peace. She’s also in this world, but not of this world. I took these core elements in the creation of Aurora Light and Sylvia Knightley. She is from another world, a world of monsters and angels. but she is on earth as a protector of humanity. Instead of looking at mythology, I centered her world around folklore. She is Lilith’s daughter, also known as Adam’s first wife. Like an amazon, Sylvia comes from a world of warrior women. She chooses to protect humanity from the dark evils that wish to harm it.
Art Process: Here are the different steps I took to create my character design illustration of Aurora Light. First I penciled out the original drawing. I used a .05 HB mechanical pencil. Then I scanned the pencils and turned them into blue lines in photoshop. I printed the blue line version on card stock paper. I used a nib pen and a Kohinoor Rapidograph Technical Pen .50mm to ink it. I did most of the inking with the nib pen though. Once I finished the inking I then scanned it again and sharpened the contrast in Adobe Photoshop. Then I created flats in photoshop and used them to help in digitally coloring the illustration. It was a fun challenge.
Character Biography: Before Aurora Light became the heroine of humanity she was taught to despise the children of Eve. Aurora Light’s given name is Sylvia, the warrior daughter of Lilith. Sylvia’s mother Lilith was Adam’s first wife before Eve. Lilith declared that she was Adam’s equal and would not be his subordinate. She flew away from the garden of Eden to find her own destiny in the world. But God sent three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof to take her back. When she refused they declared that she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day. Lilith’s sons were creatures of darkness and her daughters were born of perfect beauty. Lilith allowed her sons to die and raised her daughters as cunning warriors. Teaching them that the world was rightfully theirs and not the children of Eves’
Through the many centuries, Lilith slowly created an army of her daughters that she planned to take back the world. The strongest of these daughters was Sylvia. Sylvia was a natural warrior. Besting her sisters in training battles and tactical exercises. She was her mother’s most devoted follower, believing that mankind needed to be eliminated. These feelings changed though when she encountered Sansenoy, one of the angels initially charged with taking her mother back to Eden. On one of Sylvia’s daily running exercises, she discovers Sansenoy, and she is taken aback by his angelic beauty. Sansenoy and Sylvia began a secret romantic relationship. Meeting every day during her runs. Sansenoy had a true love for humanity and shows Sylvia the great potential and wonders that mankind could achieve. She slowly sees that humanity is not the great evil her mother has taught her. She starts seeing them as brothers and sisters. She keeps her new insights private for fear of her mother’s wraith.
Her relationship is interrupted when Sansenoy has to leave to prepare for a great battle. She soon learns that the great battle is with her mother and sisters. Lilith was mounting an attack on humanity. Sylvia is given the lead of the army, but she is torn between her loyalty to family and her new love for humanity. On the day of the battle, thousands of her brothers and sisters fight as many angels. Both sides take heavy losses, but Lilith’s army begins to take ground and the battle looks to be swaying in her favor. It’s at this moment Sylvia sees Sansenoy battling her sister Rachael. Rachael overpowers Sansenoy and Sylvia sees him take his last breath. Sylvia decides at that moment she cannot allow her lover to die in vain. She turns on her sisters and fights with the angels to stop her mother’s dark army. The surprise is enough to turn the tide and give the angel’s army the battle.
Sylvia leaves to earth and swearers to protect humanity from all evils, especially her mother. She moves to San Diego as Sylvia Knightley and takes the name Aurora Light when she fights evil. She choose the name Aurora Light in remembrance of the northern lights, where she and Sansenoy would spend time together.
