DEMONSTRATION
THE DUELISTS

The duelists come together as a symbol of opposition: light against darkness, good against evil, polar opposites trapped in a battle as old as time itself. At the climax of their respective stories, the Chosen One and the Man in Black fight for what they each believe to be right, bringing to bear the mysterious power that lies within them both.

1 SKETCH SOME POSES

Think about different ways to frame the scene. In this case, let’s go ahead and frame it at a wider angle to showcase some cool fight moves. Sketch out a few poses that you think might look good; go for big, bold and active.

2 SELECT A POSE

Pick the pose you like the best from the ones you’ve sketched. In this one, the Chosen One is pole-vaulting away from a whip attack. Draw it at a wide angle to better visualize what’s going on.

3 PICK AN ANGLE

Use that sketch as a reference point and spin the pose to another angle to see how it looks. Try putting the whip attack right in the viewer’s face, with our protagonist launching herself away.

4 FILL IT IN

From the initial sketch of your preferred camera angle, start adjusting the pose and anatomy. Move the Man in Black back a bit more. Instead of having the Chosen One leaping over him, alter the pose a little so she flips sideways away from the attack.

5 DRESS YOUR CHARACTERS

Start adding the clothes and details. The villain has his mask on, and his robes are swishing as he lunges forward. Our hero’s braids are flailing about as she flips over. Add a slight curve to the staff as she digs it into the ground and pushes her weight on it, and show movement by adding speed lines.

6 CLEAN IT UP

Clean up your pencil lines and get ready to ink. When you do complicated poses, sketch and revise as much as you need to before you start inking. You’ll save yourself a lot of time later by making sure everything is the way you want it now.

7 INK IT

Lay in your inks. Now is also a good time to refine the speed lines to emphasize movement and highlight the impact of the whip. Since it’s such a forceful attack, work in some bits of debris that are launched when the whip connects with the ground.

8 COLOR IT

For the duelists, all you need are the individual colors of each character. On top of that, add in a final lighting color to unify the picture. Color in everything according to your palette, then determine the direction the lighting will come from. In this case, the light source is above them, so work in the shadowed areas below.

9 ADD FINISHING TOUCHES

Add more detail to the colors and create another layer of shadows to connect everything in the scene together. Since the whips glow, make sure you draw in the light and color that emit from them. Also, blur the Chosen One and her boot a bit to imitate the effect of fast objects in photographs.