Frights Art #6a- Silent Hill 2

I was struggling for an idea with this one. I've noticed that a lot of my Frights Art involve things being too dark, with the exception of 2 or 3 pictures. I was thinking of stuff like making a more artistic piece that is done in only two colors, or stuff like having a split pic of sorts. I didn't want to make it a scene that was too dark again.

But then I realized, I have been practicing my cel-shading, and also I have some ideas to make the darkness that doesn't reduce the entire scene into an unreadable mess.

First off, the scene is one of the several moments where James encounters a hole that leads more into the depths of the town's twisted history. This way I also don't have a repeat of the foggy picture that I did with the first Silent Hill completion art. I used several of my brushes to get some of the texture of the rotten and possibly moldy walls. I also used my cloudy brush (that I made while I was making the Pokemon Crystal completion art) to get a more grungy shading gradient, especially in order to get the darkness that looks like it's trying to consume more.

I chose to make James' eyes to lack the sclera, because James always has that "I'm dead inside" look, so removing the whites of his eyes makes him look emotionless by default. And, if it doesn't make him look emotionless, it makes him look apathetic. The fact that I made his pupils pure black also helps with this.

I made a circle of light that I've faded on its singular, rounded side, so that I can attach it to the flashlight that James has on his jacket. That way there's a singular light source in the room. The fade is so that it doesn't harshly cut off and make things look weird and disjointed. After trying to move away from relying on gradients for shading, sometimes fading things out can still work, as long as you know what to use it for.