There’s something of a tradition within the various genres of science fiction and fantasy, for glamorous females to be at the forefront of the story, whether it be in a film, book or artwork. A strong female lead heroine appeals to both men and woman alike – the ability to fight an assortment of alien foes with futuristic hardware (as well as her fists), balanced with an ability to remain sexy, often with unfeasibly well-kept hair and make-up, is a winning formula. There are many examples of this imagery in sci-fi art. I’m going to show you some of the techniques and tools commonly used by digital artists in this genre.

I’ll use the popular budget 3D software packages, E Frontier Poser and Daz Bryce, for the bulk of the tutorial and Photoshop (or a similar 2D image editor) to add the final refinements. I’m not a great fan of ‘repeat every step I take to create exactly the same image’ tutorials. My preferred approach is to explain the basic choices, techniques and artistic reasoning behind certain methods and tools, which you can interpret and expand for use in your own sci-fi character images.