Character Design: Georgette - Process (Patreon)

1. First, I did a pencil sketch of the character. Well, no, first, I spent months writing the story and script. Then I drew this sketch of the character. I went through several different iterations of the design before I settled on this. I also experimented with some different facial expressions which might appear in the comic.

2. Next, I ink the character using a mix of vector and image brush. I made several new ruffle brushes, using my own drawings, because, if I'm going to draw the same character with the same ruffles hundreds of times, I am going to need a ruffle brush I can use to keep it consistent. I think I should probably make the smallest ruffle brush contain less linework. And I'll probably need more brushes for different angles. So this was mainly a test to see if the brush approach works with th artwork and I think I'm happy with it.

3. I colored the character, using simple flat colors, deciding on a working palette. The dress should be lavender. I'm not sure if it looks lavender or not so this might be adjusted later.

4. For the shading, I'm trying a much simpler approach. It's the same linear burn and color burn brown layers I usually use but I'm trying to keep it much simpler, with just some solid brush and some watercolor brush, closer to cel shading, so I can do it relatively quickly.

5. The shine is done similarly simply with overlay white layers and some water color brush.

6. For the skin tone, I used a little bit of natural blush on the nose, cheeks, elbows, etc and some simple color for the make-up.

7. Finally, I colorized just the linework on the hair. Colored linework takes ages so I will either use only black linework or I'll limit colored linework to just the hair and maybe other super soft things like petticoats or feathers.