Either I've been playing far too many anime dressup games lately (quite possible), or just felt like drawing this character again (also quite possible). I think the ultimate decision came when a friend introduced me to Cafe Rouge, a 7 part visual novel/cooking game. I played up to about part 5 before I really got stuck on one of the cooking levels.
Now here's what I've done with that character. The name 'Sapphira' has been sticking in my mind lately when I look at her so I suppose that's what it shall be! I don't do vectors like this very often but lately I've been having some degree of success with gradients for soft shading and makeup.
I figured it'd be better to show something more recent. Out of about 500 sketches I make, I'd estimate between 5 and 10 get set aside to ink. Maybe 2 of those even get finished, and only one will make it into Photoshop. It's a slow process picking which one to work on (and working up the motivation to actually do it) which is why having two fully inked sketches (and one of them isn't even all that new) is such a rarity!
You might have seen these images in my gallery, but in any case, I decided to de-construct the Photoshop files on the first one to show the layering process. The 2nd is still in progress in terms of building the base, shadow and highlight layers (I don't know if I'll be using accents this time, probably not).
Uncoloured Lineart
Base Colours
Shadows Added
Highlights Added
I've also started working with this image (until now I'd only had the lineart to show). Both images are drawn in a similar way (focusing on thick & thin line variations), so I may decide to add more characters to this series later on.
For the past 10 years (going on 11) I've almost always worked with Pentium 4 PCs at home. To offer up a little perspective, my first computer had a Pentium 4 processor. That (admittedly heavy) little IBM Netvista tower hasn't been called new since 2000, it even has documentation/readme files that talk about Y2k as if it hadn't gone by harmlessly. Anyone else remember the "What will you do in the new Millennium?" slogans?
I had to have been 10 years old at the time, so my only use for it was as a $1500 CD player. That and maybe I'd play a few rounds of spider solitaire or try to beat my Dad's pinball score. His best is 9 million, by the way...
I was surprised that any of my PCs could run photoshop, the most any of them have is 1Gb worth of RAM (the two with 512Mb might've been pushing it). Yet there doesn't seem to be much lag unless I have a few other things running, especially browsers with lots of tabs. I've yet to try having Blender open at the same time. I'm afraid to.
This one was on sale at Factory direct, but due to the specifications and the price, they were selling out like hotcakes. Within a couple days, I noticed that most locations were nearly sold out, or had no more in stock at all. For an i7 core (approximately 6 cores with hyperthreading, making it more like 12), 8Gb of RAM, and a 1 Terabyte hard drive, I'd call this a deal. 4 years ago I bought a significantly weaker machine from a local shop (only 1Gb of RAM and a 160Gb Hard Drive, though the shopkeeper threw in a monitor with the keyboard and mouse, and delivered it to my apartment).
Part of the reason for the upgrade was the fact that I was beginning to dabble in 3D. Not so much as a hobby like with MikuMikuDance (my current card is much too old to handle most of the shaders in the new 'MikuMikuEffect' plugin), but for making serious works I could be proud of, maybe even show off in my portfolio along with my 2D designs and illustrations.
And it's easy to find inspiration...
Notice the design of the windows, and the way the light comes through them? Similar Gothic-esque styles and lighting appeared during parts of Twilight Princess. (The game itself was significantly darker than it's predecessors).
Probably the best part is oggling at the really big environments like this one. And just to be extra nerdy, I'll even say it slightly resembles one of the castles in the Kyo Kara Maou anime.
Go big or go home. It surely rings true here...
But the reason I enjoy large environments is because there's plenty to explore, and you won't be bored of that area as quickly as you would in say... an N64 game. From Ocarina of Time to Twilight Princess, the GameCube's added power made it possible to make Kakariko Village a significantly larger, more complex map.
The other fun thing to play around with is going to be shaders. Admittedly I don't know much about them, aside from the demo videos I've seen for MikuMikuEffect.
So I assume you're wondering how far I actually got on this image... Well, for the past couple of days I was able to tweak and finish up the shadows for the most part, then start on highlights and accents.
For the sake of experimentation, I'll try adding lowlights, but I don't think I'll be bothering much more with highlights on this image.
To the left is a sample of shadowing that was done early his week, even though I hadn't totally finished... As you can see, I hadn't yet touched upon the hair, or all of the skin shadowing. I still looks pretty flat at this stage.
I'm actually running out of things to say about it, so I'll shut up and move on to the next image.
-------
This next version was when I'd already started the highlights, so I just hid the highlight layer before exporting. The accents on the beads and jewelry are still there though...
I think I may still have some work to do though, because the light sources seem to conflict between her upper and lower halves.
Her hair is now shadowed, but I may still need to do more work on it. Also, I'm considering darkening the shadows on her skin, because there isn't quite enough contrast, especially in her face.
You may also notice, that she now has lipstick and nail polish.
-------
Finally, the highlighted version. Again, may need some work... My hand was a bit shaky holding the tablet pen, evidently....
As for her bag, I hadn't noticed until I tried shading it that her drawstring bag looks strange, especially in whee the fabric bunches. I wasn't sure where I could shade to add depth.
Her lips and nails now have shadows (and highlights, in the case of her lips) too. If someone dares me I'll probably add sparkles or some body glitter.
I've debated adding highlights to her dress, because initially I thought I shouldn't. It's soft fabric, not leather or vinyl. Meanwhile I forgot and shaded her socks.
I guess I could just say they're high white boots. I'll flip a coin on the dress.
So I'm assuming you've had the chance to see the lineart for this already, if not, SCROLL DOWN!!!
Anyways I'm still playing around with the base colors, what you see here may not necessarily be seen in the final image. Matter of fact, I may be recoloring it completely. I was looking for an excuse to do a speed-paint video anyway, but I need a better screen-capture program...
So far I've used both Camstudio and the aTube Catcher utility, but I'm not impressed with the frame-rate. Thinking of trying Xfire video... (I already had the program since MSN lags when I'm playing Lunia or Ragnarok)
My next potential problem would be whether to put the video on Youtube, my Website, Newgrounds, Deviantart, or wherever...
Crazy thought, but I think at some point we'll all have to work with exceedingly large Photoshop files (that's assuming some of you haven't already). The largest I can generate working on simple lineart like this would be about 50Mb. But that's only AFTER I've started laying out the base colors, shadows, and highlights.
That still pails in comparison to the one a classmate of mine generated in high school. Or so he claims... you tell me if you'd believe it (or would think there's some problem with Photoshop) if the estimated filesize sits at 1 Terabyte. Ironically, 1Tb was the allotted space provided for the entire network.
So today, I've prepared a piece of lineart that I'll be working on in Photoshop as I find the time (and the motivation, maybe if I finish it'll go on my website). Sketched today while I was at bingo. Explanation: My Mom is involved with the York-South chapter of the MS Society, which sells the cards every Sunday. Easy 40 community service hours in high school, and I still enjoy working there anyway.
So this is how it works when I prepare these kinds of doodles. First I sketch it out with a 0.5 mechanical pencil, then I ink it with either a Stadtler or a Sakura Micron Pigma (both 0.05 thickness, the absolute minimum you can buy I believe) and erase the pencil guides. When I get home to my scanner, or gain access to one, I always scan at 600 resolution (for serious projects, other times I'll go as low as 200/300)
These are fun to color actually, setting the lines on their own layer (Multiply), and tweaking the levels makes the image crisp and helps get rid of some of the leftover pencil lines. Every layer underneath is then dedicated into coloring, shading, and highlighting. When starting out, it's easier to use a new layer for each new color, and divide them into groups until the base is complete. Then they can be merged together. I tried that today, and my file dropped from 50Mb to around 25Mb on the next save.
Next time I'll post the base-colored version, so until then.... Oh, and by the way... this 'preview' is only about 25% the canvass size of the original file. i kind of laugh because last time I made an image that big it was actually too big for my Desktop unless it was set to 'stretch'.
