The Painted Skin
A strange tale of a scholar falling in love with a fair maiden. However, she is in fact a demon who wears flayed skin of a beautiful woman lurking in the dark, trying to lure men into eating their hearts for longevity.
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This is an assignment for my character design class in 2022 inspired by The Painted Skin, a classic short story from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio in 1740. I created 3 original characters with the lineup and a book cover, along with step-by-step process work.
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Below is my step-by-step work process for the character lineup and book cover.
Character design and Lineup
Below are the 3 characters, the fair maiden, the demon, and the young scholar I designed with various body shapes and personalities, from sketches, and lineart to the final fully-colored character lineup.
The Fair Maiden sketches
The Young Scholar sketches
The Demon sketches
Rough Sketch
Clean Lineart
Tight Sketch
Flat Colors
Final Character Lineup
Book Cover Art
I have always wanted to illustrate concept art or book cover for iconic and classic Chinese Literature stories like this. Below are the step-by-step process work for the book cover, from thumbnails, rough and tight sketches, value and color comps, lineart to the final art.
Thumbnails
Value Comps
Rough Sketch
Color Comps
Clean Lineart
Flat Colors
Final Art Without Text
Final Art