The Buccaneer is my take on the Assassin-in-motion moment from Black Flag—that split second where parkour, combat, and the sea all crash together. I wanted the assassin to feel like he’s launching out of the deck toward the viewer, not just posing on a ship, so I used big directional shapes (mast, sail, deck lines) to point right at him. Airbrush was the only tool I used here because it lets me build that cinematic, game-poster atmosphere—soft spray for water and mist, sharper masked edges for the figure—without losing the energy.
I kept the hooded identity on purpose. In the AC universe the assassin is iconic even when anonymous, and I wanted viewers who know the game to recognize the silhouette instantly while still letting the painting stand on its own as pirate-era action art. The background ship, the spray, and the rolling barrel all exist to say: this isn’t still, this is mid-raid.
Painting an AC-inspired action scene entirely in airbrush was mostly about control vs. motion. The hardest part was keeping the assassin crisp while the rest of the scene stayed stormy and loose. Solving that with warm foreground tones and a darker costume worked really well. If I revisit it, I’d push even more torn-sail texture and directional spray to make it feel windier—closer to the chaos you get in the game’s naval battles.
