2D Artist Eugene (aka Mengo) is a freelancer from Russia. After self coaching he decided to participate in Art War 2. This is the 'making of' The Cursed Dragon Slayer.

Hi. My name is Eugene or Mengo (my, sort of like, nickname). Today I will try to make a step-by-step analysis of my work "The Cursed Dragon Slayer".

This work was for the ART WAR 2 challenge. Let me remind you that in the competition there was a strict division - your champion should have taken one of the parties: light or darkness. Initially, I chose the side of darkness and began to sketch something like this:

But then I thought: drawing a champion of darkness is much easier than a champion of light. Because I'm more free in the design of darkness. And I wanted the work to be a real challenge for me so I chose the light.

To begin with, I did several sketches and chose the first one. As a rule, in most cases I choose the first sketch, because before drawing I think about the plot of the picture and I start drawing the other sketches just in case. What if the eureka hits my head? 

Brief biography of the champion: When the curse seized her, she learned to understand the language of dragons. Now she is the only one who is trying to establish peace between the two races and thereby find redemption for the numerous murders of intelligent reptiles.

I refused the original composition (it was difficult, but I did it) and cut off the piece. I wanted the champion to take up a lot of space on the art but I did not want to lose the plot.

What I did to convey what is happening in the picture:

1) Near our heroes, an arrow stabbed into the ground, which hints at a hostile meeting ahead.

2) A horse and a young draconide look at the arrow. This tells us that the arrow has just pierced the soil.

3) The young draconide hides behind the champion. He trusts her and sees her as a defender.

4) The champion calms the horse the damned hand. I was hoping to show that animals are not afraid of her second nature. In addition, the curse is not transmitted tactile;)

5) The champion dismounted. She looks forward with confidence and holding a hand on the handle of the revolver. This speaks both of her readiness for diplomacy, but also and of her readiness for battle in case of need.

I sketched out the primary color, made corrections to the pose, anatomy and facial expressions, refined some details.

To start, I made a line art of the horse.

I made line arts of the characters. Now, I could move them as I want, so that the lines don't conflict. I'm not too lazy to draw characters separately, if I draw for a contest / for training / for a portfolio.

Fill in the colors.

Here, I changed the background in the rendering process. I did not like the characters coming out of the darkness. This would add points to the piggy bank of the dark side but I draw a light version of the champion.

I removed the tree on the right, so that there was no feeling that the champion was clamped in a vice. No, she confidently and severely looks danger in the face. I tried to play with the rays of light passing through the foliage, but I refused this idea.  Many of you may disagree with this decision, but I felt that because of this, I lost my accents. I also replaced the red spikes with blue ones. The reds gave excessive ominousness to the champion.

Almost the final render. I did not like the look of the artifact on the accursed hand and did not like that the tone of the champion's tunic blended with the tone of the horse. My desire to make as many as possible of hints on the bright side of the champion, got a painful character and ...

... I made the tunic darker, lowered the saturation of the metal and added some dynamics with help red leaves and blue smoke from the artifact.

I could go the other way- pile up complex design and make an epic fighting pose to the champion (as on the art in LoL or DOTA), but chose the path with a story in the art. 

For me it's like a creative equation, you have the ultimate goal - to convey mood and plot, but you are limited by certain conditions. Competitions are the ideal motivation to train in this way.

Thank you for your attention and good luck to all.

Find Mengo's submission here.