MI234 Preview/ Process notes (Patreon)

I was hoping to finish this up today but, 1am and I have to be up at 7 so I'd better save it till tomorrow...

But, some process notes for these pages!

As usual, after inks are done, I move to flats. I'll flat the biggest color groups (hair, skin, blue, black, gray, etc) into a single layer, then duplicate that layer for actual painting. For the water/lighting effects in these pages, I'm using some photos I took of the pool in our apartment complex and masking out the areas I don't need. I'm also using masks to apply a strong blue directional glow from the water.

For the background, I'm also using a photoref! It would take me too long (and would probably look worse) if I painted it directly from scratch. So I will take a pool photo and stretch it as required, then paint over that to make it look cohesive, and do my color adjustments there as well. The water surface/ lighting effects are the only times I've used a non-hand-painted approach, but it's the sort of thing that will look terrible if I mess it up so I decided to go this way both for flexibility and consistency. After I'm done reducing the opacity to the final level, I'm not sure anyone can tell anyhow.

I used to be against anything other than hand-painting because I thought it was "cheating," but then I grew up and realized that if you don't learn where to cut your corners, you end up wasting a lot of time and effort. And, if you've taken that Schoolism course on lighting/ painting, you'll see that when photos integration is done correctly, it makes the final product much stronger. To each their own tho; I just think it works here.

Well, it's my brother's bday tomorrow so I'll be gone most of the day, but I'll hopefully be back home and ready to post the full thing in the PM tomorrow~