ELVEN DRAGON RIDER

This course was really helpful and inspiring to create an Elven female warrior, specifically a dragon rider with full armor reminiscent of jousting medieval knights.

The world I envisioned to drive my design, is a world where only elven women can commune with, and control dragons. This ability makes this elven women warriors a force to be reckoned with and a huge asset to be part of an army.

In the case of my character, she is a member of a full squad of elven dragon riders that fight under the rule of a ruthless human warlord as part of his army. She and the other elven women, unfortunately are coveted for their special ability to commune with, and control the dragons. Elven girls are kidnapped at a very young age from their villages by human marauders and mercenaries hired by the warlords. After the girls are separated from their people, they are indoctrinated under rigid vigilance of slaved nuns and clerics, following orders from the warlord, so he could have some kind of control over them and have dragons at his command.

Shyn Bradan (my character's name) develops a rough and tough demeanor, as needed to tame and ride a dragon, and finds solace in the fake religion that was imposed to her since childhood as a form of control to serve the warlord rule. Because of this situation Shyn and the other elven women develop a cultish personalty as part of the Clan of the Scarlet Dragon, the red color has a great meaning to them, and is a great amulet to have when they go into battle, they add red pieces of cloth, or stones to their armors as good luck charms.

Also I wanted to show the damage on her armor from multiple fights and encounters in battles, specially with other dragon riders from rival Clans and Warlords armies that populate this world.

I took inspiration from the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi ( the art to repair broken pottery with gold ) for the reparations on her armor.

I took this pictures on a trip I did to England when I was visiting the London Tower museum, and they were really helpful for reference, and inspirational in the development of Shyn's armor.

I created Shyn in Procreate and finished the illustrations in photoshop where I did a bit of color grading for the character, and add the atmosphere and enhance the illumination of the environment.

Here are some rough sketches of the process in designing the character, her armor and helmet. I sketched all the pieces of the armor, at the end I only rendered the upper part of the armor, and leave the legs guards, grieves and armored boots for another time.

I refined the sketches before beginning rendering the character.

Thanks so much for your attention!

Really glad to share this project with you all!