Love in a Bottle Hair Braiding CG Process (Patreon)

Time for another LiaB CG process! Next is a CG I struggled with a little bit. (p.s. if you haven't read the previous CG process posts, read them here!)

Right off the bat, you might be noticing something funny. Why is Ankora's sketch so loose compared to Sandy's!? Well, I actually wasn't sure if I wanted Ankora to be in this CG at all to begin with. I'd already done the camping CG of these two, and not all of the love interests' CGs include Ankora. I was entertaining the idea of just Ankora's hands being visible in this drawing, reaching in to braid Sandy's hair, but it just didn't feel as sweet and intimate as I wanted it to, so I committed to just adding Ankora in after all.

Even though it's important for the CGs to convey the cuteness of the love interests to the player, Ankora is very much her own character too, and she doesn't really function at all as a player self-insert the way some other dating sim protagonists do. Not that that's a good or a bad thing!! I've played lots of visual novels with a blank slate protagonist, or a protagonist that's customized or molded by the player's choices, and I love those too. But Ankora has ended up being a very strongly defined character, so I think moments like this CG can serve not only to endear the player to the love interest, but specifically to Ankora's relationship and dynamic with that love interest.

But, well, by the time the flats came in, I felt like something wasn't right about Ankora's face. It just didn't feel Ankora-y to me. But as much as I tweaked it and flipped my canvas back and forth and up and down, I didn't see anything that necessarily felt WRONG with her, so I thought maybe shading would help. SIDE NOTE: adding detail to a drawing that feels off rarely actually solves the problem. A lesson I would soon learn…

Again, I checked it and flipped it and tweaked it at this phase, and it didn't feel BAD, but it didn't feel like Ankora. Maybe you know what I mean at a glance, or maybe you're totally confused. But I've drawn Ankora a lot already, so I feel like I've gotten picky about what drawings feel Ankora-y. Also I realized her left arm was kind of non-euclidean and was not hooking up with her shoulder, at least not really. I fix that later down the line.

So I finished it, and I liked how the coloring came out… and it still didn't feel RIGHT. This is a bad feeling after putting a lot of time into a piece. Oops!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thankfully, it's the year [insert current year], and we have technology for me to fudge around a little bit without making too much additional work for myself. The liquify tool and I went to work smudging stuff around.

If you haven't used it before, Clip Studio's liquify tool is maybe my favorite of all the drawing software I use. It's very flexible when you need to move things around, and if you group your layers into a folder, you can move all the layers as a single unit without flattening them. So I grouped the character layers separate from the background.

This is the final result. I'm kind of embarrassed by the idea of showing this, but it's a part of my process, so I'll show it even if it makes me feel like a bit of a hack! Be nice to me, this is a very vulnerable moment for an artist!

So I think I realized that Ankora's face just felt a little too broad. She's got a soft face shape, but I want a little bit of narrowness, especially down in her jawline, so I moved that over. I also felt her neck looked a little short. Sandy's face, on the other hand, I was quite happy with but now I felt like her head looked too large compared to Ankora's, so I did a shrink liquify and pushed stuff around. I also realized I forgot to blush her cheeks, so I added that.

What do you think? Are you thinking "I liked it better before the liquify changes"? If so, sorry to say but it's too late to go back now! I saved the Clip Studio file! I have to commit to my decisions now! That's how life is.

Thanks for joining me in looking at these CGs! I hope you enjoyed seeing behind the curtain a little bit. I'll consider showing more CG processes off in the future if there's any interest.

Peace!

-lovelandisle