Ikaruga stage 3 miniboss (second attempt)

This is a piece that combines my favourite art style, Mono Colour, and one of my favourite games, Ikaruga.

For almost a decade now I’ve been wanting to depict this enemy, the mini-boss from Stage 3, in this art style, as it is one of my favourite encounters in the game, and the game being based around the black-and-white colour switching should make it a natural fit for this style. Sadly, this is easier said than done.

After a disastrous first attempt in pencil, I just decided to go “screw it” and attempted to just trace the damn thing in photoshop to create a minimalist-looking piece which could stand on its own as a design, and also hopefully be used as a starting point for future interpretations. This also proved to be quite difficult, as at no point does the boss adopt a nice symmetrical pose as above, so I ended up first having to create a composite image just to have something to trace from.

While this approach and style worked well at first, it all started to unravel whenever I tried to render the outer sections of the ship’s “head”, as trying to depict it in only one colour is pretty difficult, and with the very clean look I was going for here, downright impossible. Without the outer sections, the head actually started to resemble a vulpine, instead of the more dragon-like of the in-game ship. Rather than fight it, I made a few adjustments and tweaks, and ended up with this. While it is a far-cry from what I was going for, in time I’ve learned to appreciate it for how it ended up.

I actually made a 3rd attempt to depict this “dragon boss”, this time going for a much more detailed and shadow-heavy approach. It was actually turning out quite well, but I ended up losing it when our computer had a meltdown and I had neglected to back up the file, which still stings but there’s little I can do about that. I’m sure one day I’ll give it another go, and who knows, maybe I’ll figure out the “trick” to bring it to life as I envision it in my head.

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