«What We Do in the Attic» — How it was done (with PSD-source) (Patreon)

Ladies, gentlemen and everyone else. I am happy to share with you the details of the creation of this cute art (which, thanks to you, will still have sequels).

This time I will focus on how I approach the creation of backgrounds (and why sometimes art is made for a very long time). So...

I. Idea

The first thing was the idea. I've seen this idea several times, and I wanted to make my own version: close-up we see a character kneeling on the bed, and between the legs in the mirror reflection we see him from the other side. Roughly it looked like this:

At first I wanted to make myself this character, and the room was my apartment in Russia (which you could see in this art).

But then I remembered the message in the comments that I had drawn Tails in shoes even on the bed, and I wanted to draw him for the first time without shoes and in stockings. Isn't that a brilliant idea? 😃

And of course, the perfect setting would be the attic in Chris's house, which I saw in the animated series "Sonic X".

And I started creating a location.

II. Location.

1. In order to create an attic in Chris' house, I reviewed some of the "Sonic X" series and took screenshots of this place.

At the same time, I realized that the picture would become even more interesting if Sonic looked out of that door in the attic floor in the background and was very surprised by what he saw :3

2. I took the models of the characters, put them in the right poses, and based on the screenshots taken from the cartoon, I modeled the room. It turned out like this:

Part of the models (for example, a bed or a table lamp) I found it on the Internet, but I modeled this technological device by the window myself.

3. While reviewing the cartoon, I noticed a funny detail (which I hadn't noticed before): during breakfast in the series "School Wars" Grandpa Chuck has something sooo similar to a bottle of wine on the table! It seems Grandpa is not averse to a drink in the morning 😄

4. And here's another from another angle. It's definitely wine (or something stronger) 🍷🍾

I wonder if such a detail could have appeared if this series had been made in 2023?)) But in my art it is definitely allowed ✨

5. I was thinking, what would be an interesting label to make for this bottle? 🤔 And suddenly I found on the Internet that there is an alcohol called Sonic! 👀

At that moment, one hedgehog began to hiccup somewhere)))

Or rather, it is a Prohibition Inspired Bottled Cocktail "Sonic Archeology". Here's how it looks on the internet, and how I did it in 3D:

6. I like to work on details, even if they are insignificant in size.

In the end result, this detail got very weak (and even in a mirrored form in the reflection in the distance). But maybe it will appear in a clearer form in some of the following art.

So now you know what Tails was having fun with before he took care of his ass :3

7. In general, my scene began to look like this:

8. By the way, here's what Sonic saw:

9. Initially, I made the lighting so that the light from the window (behind the camera, we didn't see it) fell on Tails, and you even saw this option when I showed a sketch of the future drawing (link).

But then I saw that the light was too flat. And completely redesigned the lighting, so now a beautiful shadow from the window falls on the background (where Sonic is), and Tails' ass has become more voluminous :3

10. To make our background look complete, I do a few manipulations. Without them, the background was like this:

Firstly, I use the "Snap Art" filter, it makes the image appear to be painted with paints. And also I apply color correction (I add green color, as in the original room):

The wardrobe mirror is never perfectly clean, especially in the attic. I found a suitable texture and added it on top of the mirror, so that such highlights would appear along its edges:

Then I lightened those places that are in the distance. If we make distant objects less contrasting and lightened, this will create an "aerial perspective", the space between us and a distant object, a sense of depth.

This is how this process looks like in GIF animation format:

For one art, such a lot of work with the environment would be superfluous, but all this will be useful to me to create a continuation in the same room.

And then I started actually drawing.

III. Drawing characters.

1. Based on my render, I made a sketch:

2. Carefully drew the linart and flat colors:

3. As always, I make several additional layers with the selection of individual areas.

In Photoshop, if you hold down "Ctrl" and click on the layer, the opacity area of this layer will be highlighted. Thanks to these layers, in the future I can very easily work with individual sections (with each of the tails, with the arm, leg, etc.)

4. Now I need to make a layer with volume. I take my render and put it under the linart. You can see how the resulting linart differs from the original render:

With the "Liquify" filter, I transform the render so that it matches my linart:

I create a mask for the folder with the render layer, so that it does not go beyond the character's figure (so that we can see the normal background again):

And then I manually draw all the necessary details:

This is how this process looks like in the form of GIF animation:

5. So, we have a nice layer with volume. We need to overlay it on top of a layer with flat colors.

I do it the following way. I duplicate the layer with the volume several times and overlay it, I choose different overlay modes for these layers: "multiply", "overlay", "soft light" and "normal" (I indicated the degree of transparency of the layer in the name of the folder with this layer):

As you can see in the screenshot, I additionally made a layer of "Shadows in the depth" - I apply this layer in the "Multiply" mode for additional volume.

You can take a detailed look at all the layers and how they affect the result in the PSD source, a link to which will be at the end of the post

6. I paint the linart in my favorite way. In short, you can see this method in this screenshot:

And I wrote more about this in a separate tutorial: link.

7. Such important (and delicious) details as Tails' ass require my special attention 💕

I carefully draw the missing folds, add shadows and highlights:

8. I also paid special attention to his cock.

In this case, I used one trick. Initially, I had a dick model with a good volumetric texture. I took this render and lightly (so that the details of the irregularities were visible, but it was not noticeable as if it was 3D) superimposed this image on top of what was. Here's what it looks like:

9. And we have almost everything ready!

As in the case of the background, I add the effect of the depth of the scene by making what is in the distance (i.e. Sonic) less contrasting and lighter. And vice versa, what is close to us, I make darker (Tails' legs).

This is what "before-after" looks like in GIF animation:

10. With liquids, everything is quite simple here. I draw a drop of pre-ejaculate stretching down: a light border of the drop shape and white highlights in it:

11. And the final effects. I usually use chromatic aberrations, noise and vignette (how to add them I wrote in this article).

In this case, I did not add a vignette. I also slightly tweaked the shape of the mouth.

12. And we have everything ready! It turned out to be a very nice art 😃

In high resolution, you can see it in my recent post: patreon.com/posts/what-we-do-in-1-81976837 

And you can download the PSD-source file and independently figure out how the combination of all layers works by downloading the archive from this link: 

disk.yandex.ru/d/vmST84bJc0-u9w 

I hope it was useful and interesting for you. See you soon! 😉