Dolly à la Carte - Process (Patreon)

1. In Manga Studio, a very rough sketch with big fat pencils. The fat pencils force me to keep the sketch loose without getting too caught up in the details. I started with just the basic naked figures, a photo reference for a shopping cart, and a perspective ruler to draw the shelves.

2. Final sketch. Okay, I didn't really stick to the rough sketch rule very much on this one. Using the rough sketch as a reference, I drew a new sketch layer with a finer pencil. I drew in all the details, sketched in a backdrop, with shops across the hall. With the doll masks, I drew one at the far end of each shelf, then I would draw another mask on top of that one, on a new layer, to make sure the proportions were the same. Then I scale the new doll mask up by 130% and move it closer on the shelf. Repeat again and I've got all 12 masks.

3. Inking. I use a variable-width inking brush for characters and a constant-width brush for hard things (shelves, the cart, walls, etc) on vector layers. I use lots of different layers for different parts, which makes it easier to overdraw and erase as needed. For the shelves and the sale sign, I used perspective rulers again.

4. In Photoshop, I convert the imported lines to a folder with a mask and put a solid black layer in the folder. (CTRL-click RGB in the Channels tab, invert the selection, create a mask from the selection.) This will come in handy later when I color the linework. Then I create another folder and start creating the basic color blocking. I try to keep the range of colors limited for better color balance. I also made a simple tile pattern for the hallway floor and a logo for the shop floor (just text with stroke effects in a circle) and then used perspective transform to put them on the ground, making sure to follow the same perspective lines defined by the edges of the shelf.

5. Form shading. I create a dark brown solid color layer (linear burn, 72% opacity) and start painting in the basic form shading with a soft airbrush. Except for the hair, which gets its own dark brown layer but with color burn blending for more richness.

6. Turning off the form shading, I make a new dark brown layer set to multiply (80%) 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. Since this is a very bright area with overhead lighting, you only get very soft shadows up close. But I did put some nice heavy cast shadows on the backs of the doll masks, cast from the shelf above, which added some nice depth.

7. Backlight. A bright cyan solid color layer (screen, 100%). I turned one of the form shading layers back on, temporarily disabling the mask (shift-click on the mask), to make it easier to see where I'm painting. I used both a soft brush and a soft airbrush.

8. Combine them all and ta-dah! Looking good!

9. Shiny. Now add in the shinies. I used a solid white layer at 48% for basic shine on jewelry and lips, another solid white at 86% for shine in the eyes, and solid white set to overlay at 75% for the hair shine. Painting the hairshine, I use a variable width sharp brush.

10. Colored linework. Going back to the linework folder, I started adding new solid color layers, using the mask to paint the color of the linework. Since the new layers are inside a folder with a mask defining the linework, I don't have to be very precise when coloring the lines. I always add new color layers below the ones I already did so that I can be sloppy in the areas that are already covered by colored linework. Wow! I used sooo many colors on this one, what with all those doll masks. So that's a loooot of line colors too.

11. Glass for the windows was a pane! I made a solid white layer, put it in folder, used a second white layer with a mask to add the shiny streaks, then put a mask on the folder and carefully cut out the edge for everything in front of the window. Then I did it again for the windows in the shops across the hallway.

12. Final details. Add in a little blush (just a simple pink layer in multiply at 80% with a soft airbrush). Paint in the eyelashes (a folder with a black solid inside, use a variable-width hard brush to paint the eyelashes as a mask for the folder, add a second medium grey color above the black to paint in some eyelash highlights with the same brush). Finally, I reused the masks from the windows to make masks that distinguish between the area in the shop and the area across the hall and add some adjustment layers to make the shop a light brighter and more saturate and the hallway less saturate, to help draw attention to the foreground.

And I'm done!