Super Sentai Sissy - Process (Patreon)

1. In Clip Studio, I draw rough thumbnail to get the basic concept down.

2. Rough sketch. I make a more formal sketch to finalize the layout and poses, which I decided to sissy up a bit. I also sketched in some general ideas for the outfits.

3. Final sketch. 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 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 color 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 started by putting down very thick, white, soft-edged vector lines, then filled the spaces between them with colors sampled from the outfits. Then I added a white round gradient in the center, fading to transparency.

7. Form shading. I create a dark brown 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. I'm trying a new approach to glossy objects this time, using a shading style that is close to cel-shading for the primary light, then lighting the bottom to emphasize the core shadow at the edge of the lighted area.

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. Backlight. For the secondary lights, I used saturate blue layer and a white layer, both set to screen. Then I paint with a soft airbrush on opposite sides of shiny objects. The forelight is used only on the shiniest parts, mainly the metal or satin. When I combine it with the form shading, backlighting really makes the characters pop. I don't use any backlight on non-reflective objects.

10. Shiny. Since everything with shine is very glossy in this picture, I'm trying something different from usual. First, I used an opaque watercolor brush to add a streak of low-shine just inside the lighted area, near the core shadow. Then I use a soft airbrush to paint in white, set to overlay, to give it a glossier, rounded feel. Then I used a variable width hard brush to paint in streaks of solid white for the specular highlights. After painting all the shine, I use the cast shadow layer to make a selection and delete the shine from anywhere covered by shadow.

11. 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.

12. For the title text, I used vectors to draw the kanji for "Sentai", then used a font to add the katakana characters. Then I exported it over to Photoshop so I could throw some layer styles onto the text, adding a metallic texture, a gradient and color overlay, some bevelling, and edge stroke. Then I exported that back to Clip Studio and used distortion to place it in the scene behind the characters.

13. Since I colored and shaded each character in separate folder, I was also able to make some bonus pictures for each of the characters, adding in some simple vector frames and a katakana font for the names.