X-MEN Cyclops- let's break it down!

Let's start off with the finished artwork first shall we? I'm really happy how it came out, and was pretty inspired to finished this off (started off a couple weeks ago) after I had seen Avengers: Infinity War.

If you have read these break it down blogs before you know the process, I start off by finding a cool ass picture. This time its Cyclops from the X-men. Came across this cool pencil by the very talented Jimbo, link here so please check out his work and show him some love!

I haven't shown this part of the process before but some might find it interesting. After I have done all the outline of the inking I put a little X in the middle of the larger bits that I need to block out, this is important if I decide to go away and then come back as I don't really want to fill in the wrong parts. I do this for most of the inks but for this piece of art it was more important due to the fact it had so much shading.

Here is the final inking of Cyclops. The only thing I really changed was the shading on one of the bags around his belt (why does he even have them?)

Next is the the best bit of the process for me, and my little computer helps me bring the final inking to life.

So at this stage I knew I wanted to do something very similar to the venom ink I created before, just very simple colours and nothing too complex like the Thanos blog. I started off with a simple blue (as most of his costume is blue)

I then add red for the belt, badge and his pew pew beams. My idea was to make this all glow and look epic! I also added a shade to the blue.

I add a small amount of yellow in the glow effect and make it glow outwards....then....it all goes Pete Tong- Wrong!. I didn't like this direction, I could tell at this stage it wasn't simple enough so....back to the drawing board.

So I took that all away and just added a red beam across his face....yes this was better and I think I could do something cool with this.

I added back the badge and belt which I felt added some nice contrast to the lower part of the image, and in a way gives off its own glow effect without...having a glow effect.

I wanted to make it stand out a bit more at this stage, and so I added XMEN in the background, I added a bit of masking and really like how it started to come together. At this point I felt it was more of a cool old vintage poster, so I tried to continue with that look.

I cleaned up the face and made the beam a more focus, instead of it going right across his face. I also cleaned up the hair and added a very slight (you probably can't see it) fade on the red.

Felt the bottom bit was missing something so I added a strip across, mainly because I didn't want to show the edge of the bottom inks.

Now I loved playing the Xmen VS Marvel Playstation 1 game, and one of my favorite moves was the Optic Blast that Cyclops does. Considering that's what he is doing in the image why not have that in the final artwork? I think it works well.

I found a very cool steel effect on the next and did a very faint overlay on the image, I wanted it to effect the blue more but still wanted it to show on the red.

I didn't want to add Cyclops to the piece but still wanted his name on there somewhere, so I put his real name Scott Summers very lightly on the blue.

And that's the final piece I created for my latest break it down. I also added a mock up poster with an X behind, as it did kind of scream old vintage poster to me.

Anyway hope you enjoyed this break it down Cyclops X-Men edition. No idea what I will do next, but by all means leave a comment if you have any ideas.