The Making of Bowman

Spirit Siege has a booth at PAX! Time for eye-catching booth decorations. Caitlyn Patten designed the character, I just made her BIG. The game art, because it's game art, was too low res to print at this scale, so I broke out the old scenic painting skills and made us a prop. At first I was reluctant to get this crafty, but less than a day later I was bouncy with excitement and losing sleep gleefully planning methods and materials. Turned out to be a super fun diversion from the usual pixel-tinting.

Step 1: Super 77 spray-fix two 32"x40" sheets of 3/16" thick foamcore together. One layer would have been too flimsy, and I want this to endure the travel an manhandling of and unknown quantity of future events.
Step 2: Grid out the low-res art with borders, so I know what I'm drawing.
Step 3: Transfer grid and drawing to foamcore. Pencil for the grid, vine charcoal for the character, so I can erase (smear out) any drawing mistakes without losing my grid.

Step 4: Sharpie marker the final drawing, save for places where the final art won't have painted line work, like around the lips and lower eye lid.
Step 5: Cut out silhouette with X-acto knife. Reinforce foamcore seams with model glue.
Step 6: Erase remaining charcoal drawing and pencil grid.

Step 7: Color blocking with craft acrylics, generally moving from light to dark. I didn't have to do a ton of custom color mixing because craft acrylics come in a wide enough range, but I still maxed out my available mixing containers. Lesson from scenic painting: NEVER throw out mixed paint until the project is over.

Step 8: Final line work. The trick to clean lines, besides hand-eye coordination, is paint viscosity. In the case of fast-drying acrylics, that means only squirting out a little paint at a time. Too much, and the pool dries out and gets too thick to flow nicely.

Step 9: Some incredibly generous coats of clear gloss enamel. One never knows what will happen on the road. 

And here she is at the PAX booth! Picture taken from Update #2 of the Kickstarter campaign.