The second time round with this Sub-Zero fan art I tried to go for something quite simple. This is why I started off looking at a bust sketch initially. This quickly changed when I realised going digital would allow me to explore ideas better, because I didn't have a concrete idea/design down.
Thoughts
Similar ideas are present such as the ice being conjured and his body being corrupted with power. I wanted this to be a raw, ravaged sub-zero. The design probably looks like it'd fit better in Street Fighter. But to be honest, I just wanted to do something that was different to the MK style. Usually the characters are quite over the top with unnecessary design choices, not often deviating away from how they look from game to game. I changed the shin guards later on in the process because it fitted better with his style. I tried to add some story to the image, even though it is basically a character illustration. The idea was that he is in a dark gloomy place, possibly about to engage in combat after a pause. I kept some of the green magic looking stuff but toned it down.
The green magic stuff is present quite a lot in the Mortal Kombat universe. It could very well link to a variety of characters - Shang Tsung, Reptile, Ermac etc. I didn't want to put too much thought into that as I was mostly concerned with it just looking good. Compositionally I was trying to work with what I had. Again, this is an area that I should have sorted in the beginning. I should have done thumbnails! Anyways, I tried utilising the environment to have structures leading in to Subs. I may have over done that, it might not even have worked but whatever. I also thought about complementary colours with the red above his head in the Background. Warm Background, Cool foreground was the idea. The main thing was to make Sub pop, so I kept well lit using the whole light on dark malarkey with his ice ball. Obviously that's the focal point, and I was careful in making sure that the ice ball was the brightest area of the image, to draw us to it.
Part of the reason for the way Sub-zero looked, is because I was half doing a 'draw this again' meme, and half doing a bit of sub-zero fan art. With the 'draw this again' you draw the same image (or sometimes re-do it) and post it with your older one to show the progress you've made. Although I'm actually not that happy with the new one, I still did it anyway. Some aspects of the design where the same, but obviously I changed a lot because I clearly didn't have a clue back then!
Although this image turned out a lot better than the previous one, I am still quite disappointed with it. Mainly because I fell into the similar traps of not pre-planning enough and also not having good enough reference for the pose. It came to a point, once again, where I had to just call it done and move on. I believe the phrase is: "you can't polish a turd". On that note, here are the work in progress images:
