Encoded in Bismuth
Bismuth is a gorgeous stone. Mostly sold now as lab grown, bismuth is a naturally occurring mineral that forms in geometric, cube shaped spirals. When oxidized, the metal turns an iridescent rainbow.
In the language of crystals, bismuth focuses on the relationship between the spiritual and physical. I wanted to turn this on its head and instead of spiritual, I focused on digital.
I wanted this character to come across as a digital warrior - bismuth is a very geometric stone and reminded me of pixels. I sketched out a battle ready pose, the figure holding both swords at the ready and staring towards the camera. Since I wanted to keep the outfit simple, I included a set of feathered wings to add interest.
The color palette was picked from a filtered version of a bismuth crystal (crystallize filter, it narrows down the colors to their most basic). I wanted to keep the entire color spectrum
The twin swords were my favorite part to color, but also the hardest. I used a desaturated version of the yellow, blue, and purple to color the sword, then added a saturation filter over it to match the other colors. This created a colorful blur on the sword that I was so happy with.
For the glitchy, pixel effect, I found multiple tutorials on YouTube on how to achieve this look without ruining my original design. Using Photoshop's layer masks, I expanded the wings and "erased" the area, before going back over with a pixel brush and "revealing" the colors underneath. I did this a couple times with different size pixels to achieve a scattered look.
For the final piece, I created a mirrored background to juxtapose the character's asymmetrical pose. The purple spawn point was added to enhance the video game aspect.
