Mass Effect -Commander Shepard

"I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the Citadel!"


Hey oh! Ain't it Commander Shepard... , I thought you were dead! So I started playing Mass Effect 2 a while ago... and I loved it. One of the best games I've played in my entire life!! Got me all inspired to draw a portrait of Commander Shepard of course! *May have spoilers below*


Reference picture:
Now for the reference picture, I was kinda tired of looking for a shot of Shepard of his in-game model. Not sure why, but in certain poses, he looks a tad weird. He has a CG render of him anyway (which looks a lot better), but as he wasn't looking AT the camera, so I thought of looking for other references. Finally settled on the one of him on the cover of Mass Effect 2. Halfway through drawing him though, I found the Game Informer cover of him for Mass Effect 3. I was pissed! It looked great.... and I wanted to use it instead to draw. However, after looking at it more, I realized his facial expression look very similar to my portrait of Hawke. So I decided to just continue on this current portrait.


Overall:
Took really long to draw Shepard. Probably because he has so much details to do. Such as his armor, that top of his gun and such. Slowly did them all as I didn't want to rush. Took me about a few weeks to finally get him done.

Eyes:
Made his eyes lighter than in the reference picture, since his in-game model, his eyes are a lot lighter around the iris.

Hair:
Had some experience from another portrait to do Shepard's type of hairstyle, so it was kinda easy to recreate his hair. Yes, I drew strands of hair on every inch of his head.... even if you can't really see it now. Hah.

Face:
His face was fairly easy to do, lots of difference between light and dark areas... so I could tell which is which easily. Thought of using some pictures of Mark Vanderloo for guides as that's who Shepard's face was based on, but the reference picture was good enough.

Armor/Gun:
His armor was definitely crazy to do... that simple dark area on the left took me a while! And all that lines on the right had me going nuts... The top of the gun (even though it's just the tip), also took me about an hour just to complete.

Background:
Decided to add the background for Shepard. Probably will keep the same theme along if I were to do other characters.


More Mass Effect fan art:
Hmm, there is potential for more Mass Effect fan art. I'm interested in drawing Miranda (cos Yvonne Strahovski's awesome!) and Garrus (though after he was injured in 2, can't really find a good ref pic to use for him. Especially since it looks like there's still blood on his right side of his face the entire time, like they can have cosmetic surgery for Shepard but not for Garrus...? Is it because he's a Turian? Lol.).

Other Mass Effect characters? Unfortunately, I've played only Mass Effect 2,.. so characters from the first game hasn't struck much of an impression on me. Only interacted with Liara & Ashley. Tried to get a playthrough with Kaidan, but the damn comic glitch kept saying he was dead... so.. bugger. Though probably when Mass Effect 3 nears, I may draw Kaidan Alenko, Liara and/or Ashley Williams. Saw the ME3 picture of Kaidan & Liara and they looked pretty badass... so maybe! (also gotta wait for new reference pictures!)




Used:
2H to 8B graphite pencils
Eraser, Clic Eraser
Tortillions
Tissues
A4 Cartridge Pad