Adding a Friend - Process (Patreon)

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

1b. (Not shown) Before starting the refined work, I went back to the original drawing and removed the character and chair from scene, then filled in the undrawn parts of the scene that would have been behind the character. I also shifted the scene inside the monitor a little bit to the left to make more room for the characters.

2. Rough sketch. I make a more formal sketch to finalize the layout and poses. I used Clip Studio's 3D models as references and a perspective ruler to lay out the environment.

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. Form shading. I create desaturate blue solid color layers and start painting in the basic form shading with a soft airbrush. I used linear burn for the environment and a stronger, stylistic contrast on the characters, using simple, cartoony cel-shading.

7. Cast shadows. I make a brown 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.

8. Backlight. For the secondary lights, I used a desaturate pink layer and a white layer (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 decorations. 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. For the shine, I used a solid white layer for the primary shine, painting with a soft watercolor brush, then another, stronger white layer, painted with a variable-width brush for specular highlights on just the shiniest surfaces. 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. 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 used the same approach for make-up.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. I added heavier shadows for the background and then blurred it heavily toward the back to create more depth.

15. For the paint program UIs, I drew some new icons then took them into Photoshop and made some fake UI menus and toolbars, using layer effects to add borders and bevels.

16. I used the cartoon hand from the original drawing, moved to a new position.

17. I added a little extra sound effect for fun.