Frozen | adamphan

Project Frozen

Project Frozen is one of my successful digital paintings that I have been proud of as it is a unique twist on the popular Disney film "Frozen", where I took the two well known quotes from the film and had a twisted image in my head where I could perfectly portray my dark twist on the quotes visually in my art style.

The quotes I used for this project are: "Some people are worth melting for" and "Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart".

This project will only make sense to viewers that have seen the film Frozen as they reflect heavily to the events within the film as well as the way I designed the two digital paintings above in a form of an adult fantasy.

The overall time spent on this project was approximately 15 hours as I have become much more confident in making refined line art as well as getting colour values and detail to a more realistic level.

Stage 1 - Sketch

I began this project by looking at references of Anna, Olaf and Elsa including their profile views so I could ensure the size and hair details for the sisters were correct. With the reference material gathered, I did a rough sketch of the characters and refined the lineart with a thin brush.

Drawing and refining the sketch for any project I work on is time consuming as I find it important to draw clean lineart so the final image is clearly marked out.

Stage 2 - Base Colours and Shades

For the base colours I decided to apply a light shade of colour for the two sisters and then complete the colours for Olaf since there wasn't much detail to paint on to him other than his carrot nose and light grey shading on his snow skin. With Olaf complete I used a second dark colour of the hair for the sisters to draw in the hair stands and detail.

For the mouth of the sisters I used a light/dark shade of pink to colour the lips and tongue which I blended using the blur tool. I used the magic wand tool to select the lips and tongue each to apply a white airbrush for the light reflection.

The eyeshadow on Elsa features a dark shade of purple with a 50% opacity white airbrush to create a lighter shade of purple within the eyeshadow.

I removed the black lineart for the sisters and traced over a darker skin tone as well as using the shades to detail the eyeshadow on Anna.

Stage 3 - Colour Refinement and Background

I refined the painting further by applying makeup to the sisters including freckles to Anna and skin tones to the face and body and blushing cheeks on the sisters. For the hair, Anna has a white strand that flows down the right side of her hair and Elsa has snowflakes which I added using a custom brush I downloaded here.

For the painting featuring a melting Olaf the snowman, I wanted to have a summer scene as Olaf has a song relating to summer time as well as the pleasant weather and nature of the image itself reflecting the atmosphere of melting snowman and ice cream references.

For the act of true love painting featuring Anna and Elsa, I wanted it to take reference of Elsa's ice palace using the purple shades and snowflake/ice pillars to create a dark and private style scene as well as a heart shape in the background to surround the two sisters, which again relates to the quote as well as the image. For the ice pillars I used the gradient tool to create a shaded line between the white and light blue and the snowflakes and heart have a light blue outer glow effect.

The saliva on the tongue of each sister was created using a thin white brush and a light airbrush eraser where I erased down the middle of the saliva strings to leave the light reflecting on the thick strands to appear visible as well as a clear liquid.

Stage 4 - Finalising the Image

To complete the digital painting I applied the quotes from the film my links and signature since I really enjoyed the result of this project and wanted to be known for the nature and content of the characters since Frozen is extremely popular and that I wanted to receive feedback from friends and viewers on my social networking profile.

My friends were very shocked and some will never look at Frozen the same again after they saw my portrayal of Anna and Elsa, however in terms of the painting skills they were impressed that the image was a digital painting as well as the attention to detail to the hair and face.

The text font I used for the image on the left is Freestyle Script, I felt this style of font had a "wish you were here" holiday type style to the letters and it would suit the summer atmosphere.

As for the image on the right I used the text font Footlight MT Light as it has a very traditional fairytale form with the letters and thought it looked suitable for the adult fantasy painting.