At the LZ (Patreon)

 A commission that I got the sign off on late last night. The pegasus mare is Ice Shiver and the unicorn mare is Candle Flare.



     An important thing to remember when doing art is that every piece is a series of decisions and choices where certain aspects are given priority, and other elements are compromised to achieve specific goals.  While working on this commission I was confronted with several  conflicting requirements and realities. First was desire to have certain  visually interesting, dynamic, exciting, action poses for the  characters. Second certain pieces of equipment, primarily the rifles,  needed to be clearly seen. Finally was the character's overall kit and  the numerous pieces of electronics that encrust modern firearm.



     Now the client and I didn't want to give these mares full modern  Western infantry kits because then they'd end up looking like hermit  crabs. Also modern combat kits do an amazing job of promoting gender  equality because once you put on the uniform, helmet, goggles, plate carrier and everything that hangs off it. The pack and the weapon it can be hard to tell what gender anyone is. However for this picture the client wanted to make sure the viewer knew there were mares.



     The other issue revolved around the characters poses. We wanted  dynamic action poses that were interesting, showed off certain pieces of  kit, and provided interesting silhouettes which help reinforce the  dynamic nature of the characters. However this can result in having the  characters doing things that might not be correct in the real world for  technique. In reality both characters should be holding there rifles  with both hands but this ended up covering more of the weapons obscuring  their individual make, or moved the rifles into angles that also  covered them up quite a bit. The viewpoint could be changed but that  resulted once again in boring silhouettes which didn't contribute to the  dynamic poses. Yes someone who has the knowledge and a trained eye  would spot certain specific pieces of kit from a hunched over figures running, but I have to assume that most of viewers do not possess that  level of knowledge, and may not care to have it.



    As this piece came together I was reminded of a comment maybe by the manga artist Masamune Shirow, the creator of Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell,  who inspired me many years ago. Masamune had done a promotional piece  for GitS which showed the team from Section 9 standing in a jungle  wearing combat gear and camouflage. He stated that this piece was  inaccurate because if he'd shown the characters properly using the camo  what he would've had painted was a nice jungle landscape piece because  you wouldn't see the characters at all.



    The client made it clear what they want was an action piece. Not an illustration in the correct use of infantry tactics.



FYI. Tonight 9/29/18 starting at 5:30pm Pacific I will be streaming on Picarto. The show will run until 9:30pm. Hope you can make it.