Celebrating 2/4 - Twofold Art Process! (Patreon)

Meowdy! This is Theo, CG artist for Twofold and writer for Quinn's route in Samayuni.

For 2/4, aside from the comic, I did some personal work to celebrate Caprice's big day. The process is sort of similar to how I work on Twofold CGs, so I thought it'd be fun to see it come together.

The color sketch! I looked at a ton of different aquarium photos, but the feel I ended up being drawn to was a picture of a scuba diver looking up at a school of fish. I've attached a few the pictures that I liked most so you can see for yourself! It's not the most realistic lighting for an indoor aquarium, but I liked the mood of it too much to not go for it. I actually didn't touch the background after this sketch much at all. (The fish brushes were a godsend, and the manta ray silhouettes were easy enough to plop down!)

Of course, I do some rough gestures with just lineart, but lately I've found working in color from the get go really helps me for CG work. Plus, my gestures are bad! Really bad! And so it's hard to really give feedback on it when my first pass for an idea looks like this.

So yeah. I always add color ASAP!

https://unsplash.com/photos/XgIwVSXhHHw

My initial reference. I liked the silhouette a lot, but the lighting on the interior of the tank was so bright and lit up the fish so harshly.

https://unsplash.com/photos/nMPL_qRApfk

The bright white coming from the sun here is gorgeous!

https://unsplash.com/photos/T1lS1KKM8BA

The answer to my fish problem! The fish blend in with the background just enough, and seeing them move in a formation was really appealing to me.

A big part of Caprice's aesthetic is "spirals", so I wanted to bring the spirals in her eyes to the shape of the school of fish behind her.

Lining! This used to be the most painful part of the process for me. However, I've come to enjoy it lately! The secret spice for me was using a textured brush and having the freedom to know I'll draw on top of it later.

I struggled quite a bit with her jaw angle and ended up with something less ambitious than I intended originally. It's more welcoming of a pose though so I think it worked out!

Finished lining and touched up the silhouette to match. (I ended up changing her other arm for some reason?)

For Twofold proper, this is where I would work on variations and finish up the background. Also, this cg was separated into 3 main layers: Caprice, Fish, and Water. For a proper CG I dare not say the amount of layers I have at this stage. I always merge them down later but… still…

This is what a Twofold CG looks like after the lines and variations are in! Since adi is helping out with CG coloring, I stop at this stage after blocking in the general lighting.

Another example! In this one, I finished the background first to help me plan out the lighting.

First pass of colors! I laid down the values using a round paint brush and blending slowly. I got the base colors down by choosing a gray-blue tone for her skin: the amount of blue in the picture makes any gray value seem warm! Her hair is a dark, desaturated blue, too - not brown in the slightest!

Caprice's local colors vs the aquarium palette!

Colors are weird! All these colors were chosen in relation to the soft blue from the start. It might have been easier to put down her local colors and tint them blue later, but I find doing it manually easier to control overall. From here, I work by painting on top.

After slowly working her colors down to a near silhouette, I added white writing effects on top to give it a postcard feeling. I always like to doodle on birthday cards so Caprice was no different! I added black framing behind her to help sell the fact she was indoors and give it an interesting effect.

That's it for now!! adi has signed on to help out with Twofold's CG process, too.