Nanomancer Art Competition Entry - Nanomancer Concept and Illustration

First of all I want to thank @benjojo for putting the Nanomancer art competition on. I think it's such a cool idea and I love the group minded approach. How awesome is it to crowd source a project like this!!

After reading through the story and character outline a couple of times I made a short list of what was important to remember while I sketched out ideas: humanoid, ancient, advanced, alien, dark, gateways, dread, blade runner, matrix, judge dread, mad max, and LOTR. Now I didn't expect I could hit all of those but I wanted to try anyway.

After sketching for a while I came up with this sketch.

My thinking for this character was that with nano technology the nanomancer would be able to float, feed itself nutrients and communicate with the bots. So over time they would've evolved to not need mouths, noses or ears. As well with the lack or need for much physical movement the nanomancer wouldn't have much muscle mass. So I ended up with a slightly elongated, skinny humanoid creature. I liked the sketch so I moved into paint.

I was pretty happy with the render of the nanomancer without armor but I decided I should at least try out a few different schemes. I think the nanobots would have the ability to be formed into anything at will so I thought it would be cool to have a floating armor set that could be moved at will by the nanomancer. I also figured it's weapons would either be internal as in nanos entering a body and decimating from within or some kind of instant slice that came out of thin air so I didn't draw a weapon. I think weapons would be cool to work with but the nanomancer could change that at will. I drew a couple of the orb insta-slices but I they seemed a little gory to post. I chose to go with the nanomancer at the right.

Next up came the story moment or illustration. I drew out a few thumbnails and tried out some different ideas, one of them including another sweet orb slice, but ultimately landed on this sketch. I think it tells the story well. The nanomancer is just leaving the gateway from the home world and stepping into Gethyra for the first time. A few villagers are coming over the hill to inspect.

Add the usual hours of clicking and cursing and computer lag and voila! I had to put that sweet judge dread like armor back on!!

Once again thank you so much @benjojo for the awesome idea. It was super fun to design and think about this character!

Check out the story for yourself here: Nanomancer art competition - building a legend on Steem

And as always I hope all you steemians enjoyed watching my process and my art!