A third Star Wars post, don't hate me. I have been on a kind of Star Wars binge lately. This piece contains the render of a stormtrooper1 from the famed 501st legion2. This render comes from artwork for the game Star Wars: Battlefront II.

The color scheme in this piece is a bit odd, so bare with me while I explain it. For those who are unfamiliar with Star Wars there is a mystical energy called the Force which gifted individuals, such as the Jedi and the Sith can use to perform physical and mental feats such as mind tricks. Sith typically use red weapons and stay in the dark, therefore the red side of the piece. Jedi use many different colored weapons, but many are blue and stand in the light, therefore the blue side of the design. There is also a gray area that separates the two, therefore the gray middle.

I did not really have a plan for this design. I wanted to use it as a chance to experiment and try out some new ideas I had. Something I like to do with renders that are leaning in a direction is to use a tool which places a liquified effect over the render in the same direction. This technique did not end up working as well as I had hoped but I decided to keep going with the signature anyway.

I used a combination of techniques to produce the shattering effect from the end of the stormtrooper's gun. I brushed on a pattern, erased parts of it I thought were not in the right trajectory, and then used clipping masks to produce the shattering effect, similar to the Shepard design. This is what I like most about this design and is mostly the reason I decided to use the piece for this post. 

I created lighting near the middle of the picture, which can be seen as the bright orange glow. The glow looks fine on the stormtrooper's arms and helmet front, but continues to areas there should not be light, such as the underside of the arms and the back. I tried erasing parts of the glow but that affected other layers and so I left it as is.

While I am fond of this piece, I would not say it is one of my best. There are many flaws which I should have been able to fix, but due to poor planning of what is placed on the same layer I was unable to. This did however, give me the chance to test many new techniques and ideas which I used in later works.

Terms
1 Stormtroopers are the military enforcement in the Star Wars universe.
2 The 501st legion is an elite unit of stormtroopers.