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5/26/26

"Behind-the-Scenes: Fire Man Dragon Illustration"

Wow, long time no see!

I decided I was about due to write another one of these journal entries, so here I am with a behind-the-scenes of one of my most recent art pieces, "Fire Man Dragon Illustration" (creative name, I know). This drawing depicts the fearsome Robot Master from Mega Man as a fluffy dragon with wings ferociously spewing flames...What? I do what I want!

Colorful illustration of Fire Man from Mega Man as a horned, fluffy dragon with wings posing and looking angry while spitting blue flames. There are more blue flames in the background for decoration.

Rawr! (It means "I love you" in dinosaur AND dragon!)

While I was working on this piece, I was very uncertain of the direction I wanted to take it. It felt like I was just slapping effects on top of my flat colors until I got something that was acceptable. In hindsight, I think I was more experimenting with lighting and textured brushes more than anything. This really isn't a bad thing! I think it's good to experiment with art every so often, or else your work starts to feel stale (at least it feels that way for my art, haha).

Rough design of Fire Man from Mega Man as a fluffy dragon with feathered wings. He has fluffy ankles like a draft horse and a flame at the end of his tail. Dragon Fire Man biting Dragon Elec Man on the nose. Elec Man has a more traditional dragon shape than Fire Man.

Biting him and biting him and biti-

Anyway, let's get to the meat of it. This is my design for Fire Man I cooked up...this year? I think. I honestly can't remember lol. I decided to depict him as a bulky, fluffy dragon so as to contrast with my Elec Man dragon design. I ship the two robots together, so as dragons, I wanted them to look visually distinct when standing next to each other. Their similar color schemes let you know they still go together, though. Overall, I'm quite pleased with their designs! They spark joy for me.

Digital sketch of Fire Man from Mega Man as a horned, fluffy dragon with wings posing and looking angry while spitting flames.

Not much to say; this is the sketch!

Here was my sketch for the piece. To my amusement, the pose wound up looking like the one I used for his reference image. Here, though, Fire Man looks much more fierce and dangerous, so they're a little different. For this sketch, I separated the figure and flames into two different colors and layers, as using all one color was confusing me. At this point, I didn't really have an idea for a background in mind; I was just kind of going off of the emotions I wanted the finished piece to convey (that is, anger and passion).

Drawing with flat colors of Fire Man from Mega Man as a horned, fluffy dragon with wings posing and looking angry while spitting blue flames.

Blue!

Using a 2 point binary brush, I lined the sketch, then filled in the lineart with the fill bucket tool. I've been working with the binary brush a lot recent, and this is one reason why: coloring goes by so much more quickly! Also, it's just really, really fun. Anyway, I decided to make Fire Man's flames blue, as I was afraid red flames would get lost among the red of his face and neck. I think this was a good decision in hindsight!

Unfinished-looking drawing of Fire Man from Mega Man as a horned, fluffy dragon with wings posing and looking angry while spitting blue flames. There are more blue flames in the background for decoration.

Oh god, why is everything so gray??

Unfortunately I didn't save a copy of this illustration midway through finishing, so I had to play around with turning layers on and off to match how I remember it looking in my memory. I remember at this point being frustrated that the piece didn't match the feelings I wanted to convey. In addition, Fire Man was overall of a similar value to the gray in the background, which was disappointing. What I wound up doing was making Fire more saturated, as well as thickening his lineart and giving him a reddish hue. I also added a layer to the background that was just dark purple, then played with layer styles and opacity until Fire Man stood out well enough. After added some extra highlights and hatching to Fire himself, I was pretty much done!

Colorful illustration of Fire Man from Mega Man as a horned, fluffy dragon with wings posing and looking angry while spitting blue flames. There are more blue flames in the background for decoration.

The finished piece!

This piece--while I felt uncertain about it during its creation--wound up coming out pretty cool! It didn't really doing anything special in the pose department, but it definitely hit that fabled checkbox of "cool dragon art I wanted to make as a child". And honestly, sometimes that's all that matters lol.

Well, that's about it for this little behind-the-scenes. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you have a sparkling day! Goodbye!!

-Mewy