Jill Valentine (Resident Evil 3) -- Exclusive 1 of 4 (9/23) (Patreon)

You're the newest recruit in the Raccoon City Police Department, and you're stuck on the night shift with S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine. She agrees to show you the ropes, but when you lose a little bet with her, she's resigned to having you do something unusual for her...

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I'll likely never stop revisiting favorite characters of mine, and Jill Valentine from Resident Evil is no exception. It's honestly been a while since I tackled her, and as always, I felt I could do her more justice than before. I spent quite a bit of time on her figure, so I won't pretend that I did not re-use my RPD background.

Is there any Resident Evil character I haven't done that you would like to see? >_>

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When it comes to backgrounds, it's much easier to come up with something when I'm familiar with the characters or the source material in general. I have a whole mental library of suitable environments in which I can place the character, and I know how and where to look up appropriate references. For this background, I went into a save file from RE2 Remake, and took some screenshots of the RPD lobby at different angles, to get a really good idea of architecture and furniture placement relative to each other. I can always resort to drafting a background from a single image from a Google search, but if I want to get a specific angle that available images don't provide, that necessitates a lot of reconstruction in my head, such as figuring out "okay, how would this piece of furniture look at this different angle". This sometimes means I have to "make up" what certain features of the background may look like, if the available images aren't clear; that could include something like the etched detail on a pillar, or a specific section of a wall, or the hanging wall decorations. The more I have to make up, that usually means more effort and time, to create something that may not be 100% accurate, and that tends to bug me.

For this background in particular, with my in-game screenshots, I was able to confidently have all the architecture laid out for me in detail, so I could instead focus on the actual drawing. It allows me to fall into and stay in a flow state, when I don't have to keep stopping to look at a reference that only partially gives me what I need.

All that means, when I can, I'll try and get more "bang for my buck" with these accurate backgrounds. This also happens to a lesser extent with pieces of backgrounds, not just the whole thing. For example, my April Ludgate piece used parts from both the Brooklyn 99 pieces, and the Pam piece, for its background. This allows me to create a really accurate background, while conserving time that could be used to focus on the character itself.