In this article, I'll discuss my two most recent artworks - Kiara and Charlotte Silverwing. Starting with the concept, inspiration, and key decisions, then move on to the technical side.

My idea was to create a simple but beautiful composition where the main hero is chiaroscuro. Both characters wield steel swords and wear white clothes, which makes them stand out against a dark background. The second key element is the smoke (or volumetric effect), which emphasizes their nature.

Both characters are very complex in their origin story, motivations and way of achieving goals. I won't write here all of their story, but if you're interested, I may write it some day.

She stands in a ceremonial stance, facing forward in an elegant, restrained way. She is a disciplined aristocrat, and her primary approach to using the Blade is la destreza. Her moves are calculated, precise, and well-timed. This is what I tried to capture in her artwork: discipline and grace.

She stands in thick smoke, which symbolizes the questionable politics of high society. Even though she isn't a bad person, she has to make tough, even cruel, decisions without hesitation to protect order and her loved ones.

The main compositional guideline is the rule of thirds. There are two main anchor points: the hands. One hand holds the blade at the top-right intersection point of the grid, while the other is deeper in the smoke. 

Her colors are white, gold and black - both symbol of status and moral neutrality. There's a small hints of blue in the smoke and Silverwing Insignia in the background depicting nature of her supernatural powers - she is wielder of psionic abilities.

Her blade is one handed saber. 

My second artwork of Charlotte depicts her opposite nature to her sister. She is passionate, that is in the name of the artwork. Kiara described her as "capricious princess" and "True Elf".  The love of freedom is in elven blood but the world outside of Arvandor (elven heavens) is much more complicated. 

I tried to depict her in the Sword Dance move. That is technique used by priestesses of Eilistraee, a beautiful ritual dance that can be used both as ceremony and the way of protecting what you love. Charlotte's teacher was Drow priestess of Eilistraee.

Her movements with sword are more chaotic, she channels her emotions through her body and blade, which is one and half meter longsword with a wide, heavy blade.

Her smoke is red and a hint of purple-ish blue depicting blood. Charlotte is a vampire. And her outfit choices run deep into her personal trauma: she wears more open dresses and armors to distract others from her scarred face, her hair covers her damaged red eye. She wears bright makeup with ping eyeshadows, deep red lipstick and ton of blush to hide her pale skin and protruding veins.

That's part where I talk less about artistic choices and more about how I did this. But I will say a few more words about scenes and what I wanted to achieve.

I may later tell about how I made those outfits for both of them but what I can say now is my main workflow is: Marvelous Designer -> Blender retopology -> Substance Painter -> Blender scene

Let's start with Honorable blade breakdown.

I want to notice that my viewport subdivision count is less than actual render so some parts may contain a small amount of glitches that are absent in the final render. For example: Kiara's boots.

Kiara is well-fit young elf woman. Her shirt and pants was intentionally sculpted to highlight her anatomy.

I have highlighted camera that is used during the render.

So what are you looking at is a large cube - volumetric domain. There's small rectangles - smoke emitters and some gray lines - force fields.

I have turbulence field to give smoke that kind of swirls, wind to make a slight shift from right to left, vortex to pull smoke closer to Kiara's legs and curve guide from bottom left to right top which is not working.

Yeah, curve guides don't work and it was a kind of bummer but thankfully I had a new idea in Charlotte's artwork.

My light setup is a bit overcomplicated 3-point lighting: I have 2 rim lights, a glowing point and camera fill light to soften shadows.

Let's watch what I have for Charlotte

I have to say right out of the gate: smoke color regulates its density in shader but it also easier distinguish source: greenish-blue is from left hand and right is a sword trail.

Smoke here follows two spirals. She is in upward moving motion ready to strike from the side while grabbing sword with the other hand. That is not the way you would handle fight but that looks cool!

You may see trails where sword and hand emitter went. Force fields are turbulence for hands and vortex to pull it closer to center. There's also large turbulence field to make more detailed smoke dispersion.

Lighting setup is a bit more complicated. I've build a complex gradient rim light that goes from cooler to warmer colors, some highlights to properly illuminate her "healthy" part of face and soften shadows on her body.

I did her skirt posing with cloth simulation.

Charlotte's art took much more time because I had much more complex smoke setup while managing cloth sim and having complex pose and facial expression. That was my approach - do better technical stuff than before.

But what looks better is up to you. I want to hear which art you liked more!