Rexxie, don't eat all the cake!

On March 22, 2022, my journey with Splinterlands began. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never played the game because my internet didn't allow me to enjoy this adventure. However, I love creating art, and I was fascinated by the character designs and the world of Splinterlands. I decided to give it a try and bring their characters to life with my hands and graphic tablet.

Since then, I’ve been growing artistically. I just counted how many characters I’ve painted so far, and with Val and Rexxie, I've reached 80. And I'm nowhere near drawing all the characters in the game. So, friends of Splinterlands, keep this world alive as you have for the past six years, because I want to continue this journey with you, painting all the characters you use for daily battles.

Thank you for allowing me to accompany you with my art. I hope you enjoy seeing your favorite characters brought to life by my hand. Vera Salacia and the mythical Rexxie, whom I promised to paint someday, wish you a happy sixth birthday. There is no better occasion to do this than while enjoying the celebration cake.

Play Splinterlands Now❕

Tools:

Gaomon S620
Photoshop
Brushes courtesy of Imad Awan: Download here

🔰Process🔰

_Reference

-Step 1:

Vera is a character associated with water, and of course, I wasn't going to take her out of the element where her power comes from. But I also wanted her to hold the cake in her lap, so I discarded the flower field where I was going to place her and imagined a place with very salty water instead.

The challenge was that I wanted Rexxie to be about to bite the cake, but I didn't have a clear idea of the angle to position him. So, I experimented a lot, drawing lines and erasing them immediately to frame him correctly. Even though I managed to get his head in a good position, I couldn't get the body right in the sketch or the outline.

-Step 2:

And since I was going to have different depth planes and direct light in front of the characters, I went with the reliable workflow for these cases: grayscale. As you know, I always try to ensure that the values are appropriate so the composition looks decent and the characters maintain their proper prominence through lighter and darker shades of gray. Then, I use blending modes like "color" or, in this case, also "multiply" to color the scene without losing the lighting values I had already established.

-Step 3:

I kept working on Vera, correcting her flaws and especially rendering her clothing and skin more and more, trying to give them a soft look using the airbrush and the "Smudge" tool. I also focused heavily on the cake, which I painted with soft colors that contrasted with each other to make it visually striking. Since I wanted the Splinterlands logo in the middle of the cake's surface, I went to Google to find a PNG of those distinctive teeth from the game's logo to paint them, simulating that they were made of frosting.

-Step 4:

And finally, I worked on one of the oldest and most iconic characters in Splinterlands, the lord of the dinosaurs, Rexxie. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there are no other dinosaurs in Splinterlands. There are many dragons, but I haven't seen another dinosaur specimen there. Anyway, I finally figured out the right angle for his body, then searched for the appropriate shade of green for his environment. I painted him about to eat the 6th-anniversary celebration cake of Splinterlands, which already had a cool candle shaped like a 6, sparkling and filling the air with that magical joy I've tried to capture through Vera's smile.

But I want to keep celebrating Splinterlands' 6th anniversary, so tell me, which other iconic character should I paint next?