[process] Deep Dive Longread - Disco artstyle comms

This month got verrrry busy and intense. I've hosted a private round of commissions for Heinclub discord members to prepare the characters of local lovely folks (shout out to all my sweethearts who support me here <3) for the Lex Imperialis DLC, plus grabbed some of my other dear trusted clients alongside (hiii Ribbzzz <3), and wow! Now I definitely must share some results and end thoughts on it while I'm still busy catching up with the rest.

So. Now, let's delve into the process, shall we? 

Disco Elysium style is quite tricky, it requires a distinct approach which leans heavily into broader strokes usage and a funky pallette, sometimes quite monochrome of on a contrary extravagant and bold. All of the portraits are unique in their own sense and my approach to each one varies from one to another as I'm still exploring and adjusting to the style.

1. Sketch stage

Using one of my current comms as an example (Rook Eshe de Riva for Arkamos Aurelius). Here's the reference board I've assembled from what my client have provided to have as a base, and what I've picked from my own that's notably the hands posing. The sketch stays crude and I'm not delving into the lineart details and cleaning here, as it's not what the style is about at all.

I immediately start with brainstorming a colored sketch ideas with different pallettes to have a bit of variety choose from, which can vary quite hard or on the contrary can just have a slight difference in tone, based on the character personality and/or the painting idea. Since it's a standalone portrait and not a concept art, I'm not delving into a broad variety and keep the choosing simple with most interesting and fitting pose and two colour variants.

I'm eyedropping my tones from the original portraits from the Disco Elysium game, as I'm still not quite bold enough with making up my own pallettes and go nuts with colors (which I aim to improve :3)

It's still valid to referencing the pallette on works of others too. If you're still struggling with colors just like me, then not be afraid to do so, just keep in mind that it's also a skill you aquire training your eyes and expanding your visual library just like as the use of photo references. And professionals also do color picking, be it from photos or other paintings (especially of masters).

The particular request was to include the purple tone that embodies the signature color of DA:Veilguard, but I added one more option with a more upbeat look (leftmost one) that suited the character but strayed from the request a bit. The client still chose rightmost variant in the end, but it was still interesting to try and offer a different approach!

2. Rendering stage

So, we've made the foundation to build our further rendering upon, let's get into that!

As I've said before considering the style, I'm jumping right into rendering part right on top of the sketch completely passing the lineart stage. Lineart is redundant here and all the sauce lies in the heavier paint strokes.

This stage most purely consists of using a single brush: the 72 px flat one from the amazing Free brushes pack by Greg Rutkowski. The details building on top of itself with broader strokes, then I'm rendering more closely at the prominent focal point — the face. But even there I'm not really delving into fine detailing, not at this stage — the strokes stay broad enough to save the room for refinement in the next part.

3. Finishing touches using Rebelle

The third and the last part is to add some layer of traditional painting charm and bring forth the oil paint textures, and that's where another painting software Rebelle by Escape Motions joins our workflow.

As much as I want to ditch Photoshop nowadays I still do most of the work there, and Rebelle still stays for me as finishing part of the process where I just paint over to amplify the painterly feel and render some fine details.

I'm mostly using an oil/acrylic brushes with the hard edges rather than soft and playing with load and oiliness settings for sharper strokes and heavy texturing.

Close ups to get a better look on the oil paint strokes. I mostly place them on the flat planes of my bigger strokes or to accentuate the shapes (the neck, collarbones, certain hair strands or so. Broader strokes go on flat surfaces while more intricate I leave for refinement near the focal point. If I'm about to give you a stroke with that description then I'm really sorry. xD (I had to joke about it at some point welp I'm sorry once again)

And that's it! Slapping some final texturing on top of the bg and we're done.

My end thoughts

I think the style enables a lot of freedom and a vast field to experiment on. Every portrait I've come to do by this point has it's own personality and it's own unique feel to it as I'm still getting used to painting this way, but it's been a lot of FUN and this technique has come to be my absolute favourite of all.

What aspects this allowed to train and explore: 

• Faster workflow (3 steps total!)

• Brushstrokes economy

• Working with limited colour pallettes

I love the fast pace it enables, love the expressiveness of it, I feel like it just unlocked something inside that I was previously struggled with. I can feel I can totally skip the Rebelle part and just go with the second stage with just a single brush only, just leave a little bit more room for refinement in the end. But overall, this been like a breath of fresh air after my previous 'neater' styles. Time to embrace the mess :3 I hope this will manage to speed up my commission queues that way.

But of course I'm adopting this technique into my price list as well! As a separate branch of the painterly approach.

I'll be adjusting my prices a little once again for the next commissions round in the late March, this time open for everyone! Based on the demand, I'll see if the waitlist slots will be limited and hand picked I'm afraid, depending on the scale of the requested works.

Thank you so much for reading this down to the end! :3 I hope this insight was interesting to read and helpful 💖💖