Unearthed

[edit]: Now available as prints in many different formats (currently including wall art prints, iPhone/Samsung Galaxy phone cases and greeting cards) at Redbubble.com:

---->>>>  www.redbubble.com/people/xarca… <<<<----  

[For people unfamiliar with the characters: these are Meta Knight, Sword Knight and Blade Knight from the Kirby games series. Go play those games! They are the manliest ever! I swear.  ]

Phew.

I really pushed my limits with this one. After many hours that I dare not count or even think about, lots of re-arranging and perspective-changing, re-formatting, resizing––this image probably is the record holder when it comes to amount of working hours put down as well as file size (239 MB) and amount of layers (69 of them, not counting hidden or merged ones (at some point there was a whopping 100+ of them)). Then again, I began this picture about 4 1/2 year ago and my ambition was far greater than my skill at the time. Having stubbornly worked on it on and off since then, it's not until now that I've had the experience and skill enough to be able to make it look like the way I had planned. That's what one gets after biting more than one can chew, I guess!  

Oh well.

As for the story of this piece; well, it all began that day 4 1/2 year ago when I was looking at some fan art of these characters, when all of a sudden––there was this spontaneous image appearing in my head where these three were standing in a dusty, rocky desert area. Blade Knight was standing to the right and beckoning towards the others to come and look at something, while Sword Knight simply stood at the left looking towards him and Meta Knight was somewhere in the background walking towards the intended point of interest. The whole image was supposed to have this 3D-render quality to it, as if being a screenshot taken in-game. 

That being said, this is not a scene that occurs in any of the Kirby-games but rather an idea I've had for these characters in a possible future game. The story would be something along the lines that, while Kirby busied himself going out in space to chase an enemy of significant importance, Meta Knight and his comrades set out on a quest to find some lost relics of power. Bonus points for whoever can figure out what that medallion in the foreground is supposed to be!  

It probably has some flaws still; but then again, the composition and perspective of this one was tricky as heck, and it was kind of difficult to make the foreground melt in towards the background and just make the whole thing look right… But I've decided to call it done now. Some critique and feedback would be most welcome, though, so if you see anything that could be done better, please tell me about it!

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Technique: Digitally painted from scratch (except shrub and cliffs in background which is partially made from a self-taken photo with a gaussian blur filter applied)
Tools: Photoshop CS4 and Wacom tablet
Original resolution: 5302x2902 pixels
Time taken: don't ask!  

Critique and feedback would be much appreciated!

Meta Knight, Sword Knight and Blade Knight are characters © HAL Laboratory, Inc./Nintendo

[Also: type "invincibility candy" in your comment if you read through this whole mass of text!   ]