Ada Wong Lineart -- Exclusive August 2020 (Patreon)

I know it's technically not August yet, but I started drafting this piece pretty much the day I finished Wraith, so I'm a little bit ahead. No need to thank me.

I love doing these Patreon Exclusives, because I use them to really expand on my skills, and try out new techniques -- as opposed to commissions, where I have a more limited time budget, and don't want to risk anything "experimental" for a client's piece. I've always struggled with proper perspective drawing, so I did a little bit of research in the drafting phase of this piece, and made sure I established a reasonable foundation before I actually started drawing the background. So much of the great art that I see utilizes backgrounds, and I always wanted to do the same to make my pieces more impressive and immersive, especially since I want to bring the absolute best to my Patrons.

Like with my Jill piece, I wanted to imply that Ada is in Raccoon City (during the events of RE2 + RE3), and is taking refuge in one of the abandoned, boarded-up buildings. To make it more visually-interesting, I decided to do a single vanishing point directly behind Ada, and set it a little low, so the perspective lines "radiate" outward; we now get the feeling that the "camera" is on the floor, up close to her feet, and makes Ada the center of attention.

Once I had the perspective down, making the environment seem "lived-in" was important, so it doesn't end up looking like a set piece. That involves a lot of random items here and there, along with wear and tear on pretty much everything, but again, I needed to ensure I had the basics down first. That meant I had to draw out the main surfaces of the counter, the window, and the back wall, before I started adding things like the cleaning products on the shelves, or the can of pens, or the rough edges of the rubber floor mat. This stuff takes long at first, but it starts to gain speed as you move along, and it's such a great feeling to see it all come together.

For Ada, while perspective does matter, one of the biggest concerns is the "volume" of her body. For example, right now, Ada's breasts aren't well-defined; all we have is the edges of her dress to vaguely indicated the curves of her breasts. Instead of just using lineart to draw the arc of each breast, I'm going to use shadows in the colors of her dress and skin to indicate them. This will result in a much more natural, realistic, "soft" look; I've used this same technique a lot in coloring feet as well; it makes the feet look so much better IMO, and lets me focus on nuances, rather than just scraping in lines with lineart and saying "this is where the ball of her foot is", or "this is where the bottom of her breast is". That being said, I do like to keep the lineart on the major forms of the figure, and in areas where pitch black is going to be used anyway.

It also turns out that a lot of my followers really like seeing the character's footwear on the side of the piece, as it implies that it was "freshly removed"... So I made an active decision to do that in this piece. c;
In terms of variants, do you all think I should do a pantyhose variant (seeing as how Ada is indeed wearing black pantyhose), or should I do a sock version instead? I will be aiming for one or the other, as I might not have time to do both.

Please let me know what you think! I love to hear your thoughts.

~ES