Finally got some time to myself to work on my own stuff. So I drew this up. An image from one of my many stories.
Click for bigger image.
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs4.postimage.org%2F9V2iS.jpg&hash=3a448dec88906c24e421674ff7a89ff71f7f7fdc) (http://postimage.org/image/k42kvdr8/)
EDIT: (now with an excerpt)
It had been a long time. How many years was it now, nine, twelve at most? Despite however long the stretch in between the horrid feelings this experience gave him, it felt new, just as overwhelming every time. It was seared into some depths of his mind, so far he couldn't reach to claw it out, yet it persisted to prominently displayed itself in his daily rituals. The same experience that drove him to scrub his hands raw, to remove the oily feeling evil left on you , to keep everything just right, safe, contained. To stop this. To what avail?
It was happening again.
This place was the world, but at the same time was nothing like the one we all knew of. It was a dream, a dull, twisted, dusty mirror of our realm. Cold, dark and desolate, at first glance anyway. There were others here yet to be seen. Watching? Watching what? Him...?
Radley's breath got caught somewhere halfway between the outside to his lungs . He hated the suffocation fear caused. It was capable of making your chest shrink so tight you could feel your heart beat against it's cage. Of course most people may not know the feeling unless they knew real fear, something this particular man should have grown accustomed to, but fear doesn't work that way. You find ways to cope, only Radley never did it well.
He could feel the little ones before they were visible, sliding their distorted ghostly forms around his legs and circling in from the shadows. Already their filth clung to him. Blank eyes were aglow, stark against their indiscernible bodies. All eyes on him. The man staggered a few steps back, finding his breath again at some point. They never harmed him but Radley could always see what was there in their burning eyes. These things were wrong in the most true sense of the word. They represented everything that was wrong. It was there in each of them.
A flood of a city waiting to happen.
A famine that will devastate a tribe.
The death of a child...
"Get off!" Radley managed. He shook his leg in a lame attempt to remove one of the ethereal beings.
Already he was feeling a welling sense of panic. It steadily grew, manifesting itself while the reality was these were not the things he feared. Not truly, or nearly so much as what was coming, the thing that already began to loom in from somewhere beyond sight. It was here.
He had never had the chance to solidify his position on religion but the only word he could utter was. "God."
Anything but.
A shudder wove through him, weakening his knees, and the man took a few more useless steps back. The beast was so massive Radley's desperate movement did nothing. It broke through the black, its singular eye a cavernous pit that illuminated the dark with some inner light. The other eye, or more correctly where it should have been, was only a hole. Upon its head was a great triangular horn like some imposing bone crown. Its hunching, sickly, twisted, mess of a form moved ever closer, looking down at the lone human. The human stuck in a sea of monsters, this thing's children. He was not one of it's beloveds, no, but he was something to the creature. It recognized him.
The thing wanted something from the man that he couldn't imagine giving. It knew Radley's answer. The same answer he gave in his youth. But it established it's desire none the less.
Ouuuut it hissed in some manner beyond words or thought. Let me out...
"I-I can't" The man spoke, a pathetic stammer.
The implications and responsibility this demand weighed on him were severe. He didn't want it and couldn't fathom it.
It breathed with heat and foul odor, and released a screech so loud that its volume stretched out and filled the space of this world. The sound shattered any cranny of silence. This wasn't the answer it was looking for.
Radley was now to his knees, the noise so nerve wracking and painful in his ears he had to clamp his hands to them. Even after the sound had faded the mans eyes stayed clenched shut and his nails dug into his scalp. tears may have escaped him if he were to do anything else. Many cool wisps of ethereal hands touched him as the mass of damned creatures swam around. He remained petrified. They pulled and prodded, never to hurt, but to beg and plea at the human, wordless. These evils wanted out of this world.
The man whimpered. "I can't." He felt stupidly redundant even as his eyes stung threatening to tear. Even in this situation he managed to care. Stupid. "No."
A slick hand caressed his face and the man clambered back in surprise. He found himself on his feet again, eyes open and gasping, looking into one of the blank faces. It stared back empty and without much reason.
"Get away..." Radley hissed, continuing to back away, moving pointlessly against the current of growing beasts. It was impossible to shake them. Their numbers continued to swarm and the greatest of the evils still loomed high above, watching and waiting. "Don't touch me!"
Radley fought through the masses, his legs growing heavy as they clung to him, bodies that looked weightless and intangible wrapping tightly against his slacks, feeling impossibly heavy. "Please!" This time he sobbed, his voice losing edge. "I can't."
The beasts persisted, trying to drag him down among them, swallow him into their numbers. All the while his chest fluttered aimlessly, painfully. He was trapped. There was nowhere to go. He just wanted out, anywhere but here, again.
Still he struggled and thrashed against the closing tides. The monstrosities filled his vision, but even as they blacked out the sky and ground of this wasteland, the glow of their vision still burned.
In his panic Radley could have sworn the ground lost its solidity, crumbling and breaking under his weight and those that forced themselves towards him. First he believed it to be more of this distorted imagination, or his feet merely slipping on thin gravely earth, but that wasn't the case.
The world began to bow and sag inward, the crackling of its framework now distinct and the dropping unquestionable. A blinding light burst from somewhere beyond this dream and spilled in from reality as the last threads unraveled between the two existents. It engulfed his vision as any last support gave way.
Before he could utter a cry, the sky fell in.
wow I love it! particularly, the detail on his specs. are those things birds?
Very cool!
Quote from: Nero on October 10, 2010, 08:37:24 PM
wow I love it! particularly, the detail on his specs. are those things birds?
Nah, just your garden variety demons that you can accidentally let loose unto the wold on any given day. Fun stuff.
That's awesome, love it.
Quote from: Kamren on October 11, 2010, 04:48:03 AM
Nah, just your garden variety demons that you can accidentally let loose unto the wold on any given day. Fun stuff.
I've had days like that.
Very cool indeed.
Very Awesome. You have a great talent.
Thank you, everyone. As long as it is enjoyed. :)
Ohhhh, I like this a lot! I love how dynamic it all feels, and most of all I love the coloring! Especially on his vest. And his watch. Such nice attention to detail and color.
Composition is great, as is the muted palette for the background. :) I like your light source of choice.
The only thing I would suggest is playing with darks some more to create greater depth.
Looks great!
Quote from: Nick on October 12, 2010, 02:36:47 PM
Composition is great, as is the muted palette for the background. :) I like your light source of choice.
The only thing I would suggest is playing with darks some more to create greater depth.
Looks great!
Thank you for the suggestions. I may go back and make some edits. When I colored over the grey scale image I lost the depth the values created. I think its because I was fudging around with too many layer effects and wasn't paying attention to how it was mutilating the dark tones.
But even in my original image I do see the foreground character needing more contrast and dark tones in comparison to the rest of the image.
Grey scale:
http://cookiedemon.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d30d0s0 (http://cookiedemon.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d30d0s0)
In other news I wrote up a little back story to the image.
Wow, I like your stuff! Is that guy's face based on yours? You look pretty alike.
Holy hell, that's awesome. The foreshortening is fantastic!