Tifa x Aerith GIANT Process Tutorial (from flats to post-processing) (Patreon)

Long overdue but here's my process post for the Tifa x Aerith pinup. I'll try to not dwell too much on the mechanics of the process that are pretty much the same for anyone doing line-oriented work and instead focus mostly on the thought process. It's a little long, and I apologize for that. Hopefully you can just skip around to the parts you're most interested in if the overall thing is too long! <3

At this stage of the image I have background lineart & fill, character lineart & fill, and foreground lineart & fill.

My first step is to get a clean layer base for the illustration. so a flat color fill for the foreground, background and figures. Using clipping masks in Photoshop on top of the figure layer I get my clothes, hair, etc. blocked out as their own flat color layers. From here on out the process can stay really clean. 

 I tend to work in very limited palettes so I'll keep similar materials and colors on the same layer. For example, all metal, all leather, all red things. When I'm making fickle color decisions along the way I can just color adjust all the red or gray in the entire image without having to worry about repainting anything.  

I roughly mock up the color- no need to be too accurate, I'm just trying to figure out the palette and all I really know is that I want warm evening sunlight and a boatload of white/yellow lilies.

 I usually keep surface details of the bodies like blushing cheeks, toes, ears, nipples,  on the same layer as well so I can adjust them independently of the skin tone. Sometimes I'll do soft gradients across the figures and it saves me many headaches if I keep 'em separate and don't have to shade them.

I've started to dramatically shift the color palette to something more orange-- I often find it helps to determine what color "white" is in my composition, In this case, the whitest thing is Tifa's tanktop and I've decided that it's going to be a pale peachy pink color since it's reflecting sunset sky while in the shadow of Aerith. Once I've determined that I know i can adjust everything else to be a little peachier version of their local color.  

I gotta get rid of that greenish hue of the skin. Everything that's green starts to shift into a more cold gray/blue territory. 

Next, I've been avoiding a big part of the image, which is the light source, time to get over that hurdle. I add in light falling on the stones and stairs, which I really want to help ground the figures and really make them feel anchored in the midground.

This is also a big composition element and it doesn't have to be totally accurate, just feel accurate. 

I've placed slivers of light in different places now, which help create a pathway through  the image. The light helps round out forms that were really flat before, like Tifa's shoulder. Also I get to put in some real hot, juicy backlighting on Aerith's dress as it drapes on Tifa's leg. Things finally start to feel like they're working in that one little section and I'm going to try to spread that sense of glowy warmth everywhere. 

Also, the background is important, I'm trying to figure out. Up to this point I've been pretty frustrated and frankly confused by the color. I first try two different colors thinking I can make a graphic shift between the light and shadow portions of the foliage but it feels real clunky. Time to move onto the foreground...

Now I've got another fun moment, a vaporwavey gradient of light on the glass of the lamp. But also I get to go into my favorite part. I put a layer for highlights on top of my lineart and make everything SHINY!

I briefly put bit of light catching on Tifa's breast, but it really just ended up being distracting and harsh so I got rid of it. I hoped it would help describe the roundness of the form but it ended up having the opposite effect. Such a contrasting, cut out shape was kind of jarring and flat.

I like to do this to help describe the materials a bit better, make the bodies feel a little bit  more dimensional in palaces and put those dewy highlights around the nose, tear ducts, cheeks and ears. When the skintones are in this midtone range, those highlights, if they're not too bright will make the skin look like it's just gently perspiring which is what I want for the summer evening vibe. 

I make the highlights colder than the main warm lightsource so they feel like they're reflecting more of the colder night time light of the sky.

Finally things start to click. I start putting in gradients all over the place. The foreground flowers creep colder as they move into shadow and in the background I really try to soften the transition of warmth/cold so that their faces glow warmly against a kinda halo of cold blue/green. I also add some silly graphic line flourishes in the distant background for fun. :)

I also start shifting the line colors. This is a time when it's really helpful to have different materials on different layers because I can select the contents of those layers and easily recolor whole portions of the lineart at once. It's wonderfully quick.

Basically I change all the line colors to darker versions of the colors they contain. I feel like the darker the color the heavier it makes the material feel. So Aerith's jacket and Tifa's boots, while the same color, I made Tifa's boot lines darker to make them stick to the ground more.

Also darker lines create visual contrast that take your eye longer to traverse, like a bumpy road. I make things lighter and gentler around areas of focus so it's easier for you to say, make it from the moment of their hands touching, up Aerith's arm to their faces.

I also unify the color of the light as a warm white yellow because I wanted it to feel more bright and intense. I add a pink line to where the shadow breaks on their bodies to make the the light feel hotter and their bodies more luminous

Finally we come to post processing-- I cut in close for this one so you can see easier. I start by opening up a flattened version of the image. My goal is to make it look like an old poster print. Add some texture and grit and softness so it feels less digital.

You'll see people call this process chromatic aberration, which is an old CRT monitor/tv effect of having colors misaligned. It's not too far off from the look of a printing process that has misaligned color plates.

You achieve the effect by selecting the individual color channels of your image and shifting them off-center to create the color that bleeds and spills out. Push it too far and it looks nauseating (see above) but just a few pixels in either direction and it creates a pleasant softness

Last I add a grayscale, grainy, speckled texture across the whole image at 40% opacity on hard light. I don't have a system for this I just do what works best.

It's important to keep the brightness value of the gray very close to 50% or else it will darken or brighten your image. Overlay layers work simliarly. Try putting a 50% gray overlay layer on top of your own work, it will have no effect because it only alters colors/values underneath it based on how bright or dark it is beyond the absolute middle gray.

The end result is the sensation of pulpy textured paper that has some parts where the ink just didn't stick and color that was slightly misaligned. Ultimately making something that feels a whole lot less digital.

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into my process. I know it was a LOT of words. I'll try to keep future process/tutorials more narrowly focused so they don't end like this.

Thank you all for the support, happy drawing!

W.