The characters are lit!

Alright, this one will be super short and super late.

I completed *four* exercises this week (this week's and the next one's) and I'm knackered. I needed to do this to have the tiniest chance of finishing the contest entry on time, but even so, I'm not sure I will. I have roughly seven days left, so it will be a close one.

Without much more talking, here is the first render of this week. We were asked to find a character model and "light it to impress". 

Character model by: Alena Dubrovina (Sketchfab)

Well, I'm impressed I managed to find such a nice downloadable sculpture in the first place. Lighting it was enjoyable but long process of trying everything at my disposal. This was my first version:

I might have tried too many things in that one. It's not very good, I know, but I kinda like the frosty snow look and the strong rim light. Nevertheless, I submitted the one you saw at the top (and I'm still waiting for the verdict). 

The second exercise was another lighting match and boy was it difficult to find a nice reference this time. I normally get under mild, almost pleasant, stress, but this time it was different. For the life of me I couldn't decide on what to make. I spent a whole afternoon starting one project after another, scraping each after half an hour, all in the name of "doing things quickly because I don't have much time left". Yeah, very useful approach. Thanks, brain.

In the end I put together something I'm not entirely ashamed of—and then I spent half of today polishing it up after a few comments came in. 

On the left: "The Captain" by Matt McDaid / On the right: "Male character head" by flioink

And it was done in Eevee as well! That was the biggest accomplishment, I think, since the current version is still... quite an adventure to use. 

I have to admit I'm finding it difficult to write about particular details of my "workflow" (if you want to call it that) because it would go along the lines of "and then I moved the lamp a centimetre to the right and it started casting this shadow here, so I increased the size of its contact shadow, but now these colour are not mixing well enough, so maybe if I add another lamp here... Oh no, that won't do, now it's overexposed, but maybe if I lower the intensity here and rotate that one, it might work... WHAT THE--- *sigh* Autosave from five minutes ago? I guess it will have to do..."

No one wants to read that.

Instead, I'll leave you here with nothing to read at all, and I'll go looking for my strength. I think I left it lying around here somewhere. Because I'm sure as hell gonna need it next week. Have a good one!