A Humiliating Walk - Process (Patreon)

1. I asked HinaYui to pick one of her past drawings and she chose "A Humiliating Walk".

2. Rough sketch. I make a formal sketch to work out the layout, pose, and proportions. I start getting some of the details roughed out.

3. Final sketch. I  sketch the fine details for the character. I use separate layers in multiple folders for the various props and the character which makes it easier to plan, especially when so many of the parts overlap. If you look closely, you can see that I draw some parts that I know will be completely hidden behind others, particularly the basic body shape, to make sure it will all make sense together. Keeping them on separate layers also makes it easier to shift the positions of individual features when final details on foreground features might change the layout needs.

4. Inking. I scale the canvas up to four times the size and use a variable-width inking brush for the character and a constant-width brush for hard things on vector layers. I use lots of different layers for different parts, which makes it easier to overdraw and erase as needed. Planning for the line coloring later, I try to use a different vector layer for each part that would be differently colored as linework such as one each for the character's skin, one for everything that will have black linework, etc.

5. Color blocking. I set the folder containing all the different inked vector layers as the reference layer. Then I made new raster layers underneath and started filling in the flat colors. Sometimes I used a round pen, sometimes the collor fill bucket, usually with the fill set to follow only the reference layer, stopping at the middle of a vector.

6. For the backdrop, I filled the shape with a dark color and then painted in a rough scribbly surface for the tree, using a semi-transparent round brush to paint the lighter color. Usng a watercolor brush, I then blended some of it but not too much because I want it to stay rough. Then I used the dark color with a bark texture brush to add some texture to the surce of the tree. For the grass, I used my grass brush with two colors of green to made dozens of horizontal vector lines of grass, all the same size, always placing the newest line at the bottom so that the each line is in front of the line above it. Then I used perspective distortion, with vector size scaling, to match the perspective of the ground. I rasterized the grass and faded it out a little at the top. I painted in the very simple road and filled the vehicles with dark grey.

7. Form shading. I create a dark blue solid color layer (linear burn) and start painting in the basic form shading with a soft airbrush. I always start with shading at full and then use the airbush set to clear to paint away the shading, painting with light. For the hair, I used color burn for richer shading and start with a general, soft airbrush for the overall shape, then used a variable-width soft airbrush to smudge detail into the shadows, picking up the shape of the hairs. I also added a pale yellow layer set to screen to airbrush in some soft highlights in key places.

8. Cast shadows. I make a new blue layer set to multiply and start painting in the cast shadows with soft brush, using a smaller brush in places where the object casting the shadow is closer to the thing the shadow is on.

9. On a second shadow layer, I wanted to add more cast shadows for the leaves in the trees. I stamped in some shapes with my branch brush, then stretched and distored it until it I got an arrangement that looked good.

10. Backlight. On a new fill layer set to screen, I used a desaturate solid color painted with a soft airbrush in the mask. When I combine it with the form shading, backlighting really makes the characters pop. I don't use any backlight on non-reflective objects. For some objects, I only use a backlight on shadowed side. For the most reflective objects, I add a forelight on the primary light side as well. On the hair, I used the fingertip tool to streak in the shape of the hairs.

11. Shiny. I used fill layers of white (set to screen) and paint spots and streaks using a hard variable-width brush. For the satin, I also added a layer set to overlay and airbrush in white to add colorful glistening highlights. For hair shine, I used another raster layer set to overlay and painted thin strokes with a variable-width brush, then use an airbrush to add a soft glow to groups of streaks, then use a clear airbrush to fade the tops and bottoms of streak groups, and finally use a soft round brush to erase a few streaks in the middle of each group. After painting all the shine, I use the cast shadow layer to make a selection and delete the shine from anywhere covered by shadow.

12. For the natural blush, I add in a raster layer and airbrush red just on the skin for the cheeks and places where bone is near the surface of the skin. I use the same method to paint in the make-up. I also used a scatter brush to add white speckles for glitter.

13. For the glittery fabric, I added a layer of greyscale noise above all of the shading, set it to overlay, then adjusted the tonal curve. Then I used an adjustment layer to adjust the tonal curve of the shading below it until I got  something with the right amount of contrast and sparkle.

14. Colored linework. Since the linework is still all vectors in Clip Studio, I simply selected the vectors and changed their color to whatever colored linework I needed, sampling from each section and then shifting the color to be more saturate and dark, more or less depending on how hard or soft I want each thing to feel. The hardest things I keep black. Then I collapsed all of the linework into raster layers, locked the pixel transparency, and used an eraser to fix up any places where different color linework crossed over each other or a multiply brush where the shadows were deep enough to require darker linework. Since this is a nighttime picture, most of the character was shaded heavily enough that I wound up leaving most of the linework in black, only using colored linework on the softest, lightest parts, like skin, hair, and the petticoat.

15. Eyelashes are done with a simple raster layer painted with a black variable-width pen. Then I lock the pixel transparency for that layer and use a soft pen to paint in grey streaks for texture and then soften the look with a few strokes of a black soft airbrush. I also stroked on a little purple on the tips of the lashes to make them prettier.

16. I stamped loads of sparkles the glittery fabric but only in places not covered by shadow. Most of the sparkles were small with just a few key extra large sparkles.

17. For the stars, I used a simple scatter brush of white spots, then used my cloud brush to mask them.

18. For the vehicles, I filled in simple blocks of color, then masked them out with the very dark grey so that the color is only just barely showing in the dim light, leaving the uniform dark grey everyewhere else. I added another layer for the lights, copying the bright color of the lights, set the layer to screen, then blurred them heavily, to make a glow around the lights.