G E N E R A L :
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This was painted when I first started playing RE4 and I was itching to paint Leon again after a rather miserable first attempt a few years ago - when the first trailer was released. In the first trailer, Leon's character design looked different than the final version; his first incarnation looked more Slavic (a look that I really loved, btw).
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I love this game, even though I barely have time to pop the disc in my PS2 nowadays. You can see two Mr. Salavdor's in the bg; the guy really freaked me out on my late-night playthrough's so I had to include him.
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P A I N T I N G :
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The character Leon and the gun was done in Painter 6, because Painter is still my program of choice. I never touched Photoshop unless I absolutely had to; in this case, I had to because of my previous experiences with Painter 6 (I currently work in Painter 9), where it always screwed up the canvas layer (I'm thinking compression problems). So I didn't want to take any chances and painted the bg in Photoshop using a few custom-made brushes.
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The gun was painted with the help of several references. I had to do some gun searching on the 'net - an unforgettable experience, I assure you. The gun that's depicted in the painting is called...*drumroll*... Matilda! It was Leon's service gun in RE2 and has been out of production for some years now.
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I've never painted anything resembling a gun or a gadget before, and it almost had me in tears...until I found out that I could draw straight lines in Painter
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The bg was actually fun to do, which was a first for me; since my computer handles Photoshop + layers a whole lot better than Painter, it was done in a jiffy.