Final Visual Test

Here is my final test in visual research where I tried to combine all 3 artists. I'm planning on taking inspiration of all the artists starting with the sharpness of silhouette from Ashley Wood, the character proportions of Bob Rafei and the rendering style of DOTA 2.

Below I've used another one of Ashley Wood's characters and started to render it with value patterning like in the DOTA Visual Style guide. I plan to use this approach when creating my own character designs for this project to help me get a sense of where I want my viewers eyes to go as well as the first step of rendering.      

Below are the final rendered artworks I made where I blended the value patterning by painting it in - no blend tool! - and then started to add colour overlays etc. The one thing I feel I've failed in here is trying to convey more colour in the final render. Even though a lot of DOTA's works have a one main colour with two complementary colours lightly added in, I feel like I struggled a bit to get this to come across. This is however, something that I can easily work on and evolve throughout this project.

Overall, I feel like I've come to an end with my visual research and that I've got a comfortable mix of influences of the 3 artists. My next step will be to move on and start creating my own designs and applying everything I've learned from my visual research into my designs.