Terra

Please Full view !! *begs*

It's finished! From left to right: Taurus, Capricorn and Virgo.
I've had the most practise with Taurus and Virgo because i made that small manga about them, but still had some small changes in their outfits. Capricorn had a big makeover, added a lot more details. Maybe i like this trio most of all elements because their styles, and characters, fit together even though they are very different: Taurus' style has scandinavian/primitive motives, Cap has mostly japanese influence and Virgo is gothic/medieval Europe. I tried to get a mix of those in the style of the border.

This element-pic is different because from the others it has two main colour-motives in a horizontal, assymetric way, and it was quite a challenge to get those balanced, but it was fun. I'll probably hate this pic after a few months, and do a second version like the way i did with Aqua and Aer (THose two HUGELY improved) I'm still working on Ignis, and then this thing will be really completed.

AQUA: [link]
IGNIS: [link]
AER: [link]

I truly recommend drawing series like this: you not only get great practise and dicipline, but you also force yourself to keep a level of quality through the whole serie, and when you get to number three you've improved so much that you go back and 'update' the first ones. Plus it's a great challenge to make them all fit together and make simillarities between them, and at the same time think of variations on your fixed themes. This goes not only for design, border and poses, but also composition, colour, everything. For example i tried to get the amount of dynamic to match the element: Terra is the most 'fixed' element so their poses are the most static, standing firm on the ground.

Last but not least i had a BIG excercise in symmetry in this, which i find really difficult: not trying to achieve precise mirror-symmetry, but to get it balanced, AND get that in a different composition four times. I've made about 4 versions of Terra, each of them was quite nice in my opinion, but when compared to the other three it simply didn't fit. This way you have no choice but to push your limits. If you discover/learn something good with one of them, you HAVE to add it in the others as well.

Photoshop, Wacom tablet, some months working on and off. I thought this last one would take shorter because i had experience, but that's not true...
All zodiak characters (c) me.