Dear... Burning My Lady!
Fanart + related ramble, yay.
I wanted to brush up on my miserable colouring skills so I did a full line art and colour job on the Ren sketch I did last time. I moved his right elbow because his forearm looked a bit short and redrawn the eyebrows and ear but otherwise the lines pretty much follow the sketch.
I tried a different approach with the colouring. I block coloured the hair and then went over it with a low opacity, large sized brush to do the shade and then a higher opacity, smaller brush (brown then yellow) to do section and strands of hair. I used the Addition layer to add those very bright orange strands and smudged in the roots a bit to blend it into the rest of hair. I also used the Luminescence layer to add vibrancy and create that anime halo.
The skin shading boggled my mind a bit. The first time I did it, the light was all over the place and it looked horrendous. It was so bad I had to bin it and start again -_-;;. I tried again and started with basics, drew an orb and light arrows towards him. I drew chunks of light and shade on his face (+ base = 3 colours) and then blended it in with the water and airbrush tools. The difference in blending between the two tools is that water dilutes down the colour and smudges it whilst airbrushing, the edges are soft and the colour is direct but doesn't lose the colour. I think water blends better but airbrushing helps keep the colour. Blending in larger chunks of colour seems to have achieved a smoother and more consistent look than my usual "smudging around with the water tool till it looks about right" method. The neck and chest was difficult for me because I didn't quite understand where the shading was meant to go ^_^;;. Maybe I should spend more time staring at studying torsos or something XD. After I was happy with shading, I toggled around with the Hue, Saturation, Contrast, Depth, Luminescence settings until I got a nice vibrant colour on the skin. I was surprised that the base colour is a lot more saturated (more orange) than what would normally choose, which was interesting. I then used an Addition layer to very gently add more shine to his cheeks, nose and lips, bish shine is incredibly important ^_^;;. I also used an Addition layer to bring shine to his eyes. I also put small, dark, gentle strokes in the eyes to break up the strong light blue to give it more of an iris effect. It's not that noticeable but contributes to the overall picture subtly.
The clothes were coloured more like my usual style although with the tie, I found the Multiply layer to be very helpful because it meant that I could shade the tie with just one colour and all on the same layer. Particularly useful for shading creases.
The background was done in Photoshop. I finally mustered up some courage to do something with it XD. I didn't actually draw anything. I picked a bunch of filters and shoved them through some strange settings and played with the colour filters until I got an abstract patterned background 8D. Moved it back into SAI and went over the light bit with a bit of airbrushing with a different colour, played with the colour settings again and settled on that ^_^;;. I generally consider getting anything out of Photoshop to be a success XD.
Bizarrely, I think this version makes Ren look more Caucasian than the sketch which I consider to look fairly Japanese, not sure why ^_^;;. Overall, I like how the hair, the eyes, the lips and the face in general have come out. It's probably my best soft shading pictures I've done to date and whilst there's still lots of room for improvement, for now, I'm fairly happy with it. Not sure about the nose because I tried to take the line out, I had to mold/paint him a nose and not doing a real one looked rather odd so I stuck with the anime nose. In the end, I've ended up with a strange mix of realistic style blending and anime style features ^_^;;;.
Funny enough, Ren isn't one of my favourite characters and yet I think I spent quite a bit of time (relative) on this one. I think part of the reason I've redone this picture is probably because I quite liked the pose and expression and couldn't help but feel that there's more I could do with it. I was listening to Ren's character songs (which I have generally avoided because he's not my cup of tea) for inspiration and now I've got them stuck in my head. My conclusion is that any of the UtaPuri songs (or indeed any songs by Elements Garden), even the ones you're not keen on, will eventually get stuck in your head... On a sort of related note, they did the OP for BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend ^_^;; (and the new character, Relius, looks like a purple version of Char, has a robot for support moves and is voiced by the same VA as Ren XD).
Oh yeah, I'm not that hard up on seiyuus in general but Maaya Sakamoto and Kenichi Suzumura married in August this year :o. Maaya Sakamoto is Muso's favourite ^_^;;, she did Hitomi in Escaflowne and Haruhi in Ouran. Kenichi Suzumura did Masato in UtaPuri, someone in Gundam Seed Destiny (not a Gundam fan so can't say who ^_^;;;) and also Hikaru in Ouran so in terms of Ouran, Haruhi hitched up with Hikaru *brain explodes* XD.
Anyway, a rehash of the Class A guys...
I compiled them into one picture. They were quite similar in size so it wasn't much work. Made Natsuki a had taller and added the title which was harder than it looks because of charms ^_^;;.
I finished Natsuki's route the other day. I'd say he's more of a Pieces than a Gemini myself but the makers chose Gemini because of his condition. Haruka cries a lot here but I'm less sympathetic because half of it is her own fault and the other half is her feeling sorry for him (which irritates Satsuki). Satsuki's departure was quite touching although the problem I have is I don't really believe in the integration thing but I suppose there is something quite charming about the violent Satsuki so it would be a shame if he was gone. Shining does seem to appear a lot more in Otoya and Tokiya's paths because relatively, he didn't seem to crop up in Natsuki's as much. One bit which I found hilarious was the gang trying to tell Natsuki that Shining's diagnosis during the physical examination is wrong and nominated Masato to imitate Shining (how they decided that he's closest to Shining's stature, I don't know XD). It's a shame there isn't a CG or a game sprite for it but the stoic mimicking of Shining Engrish was enough for me XD.
Nearly there-ish, 2 + 1 hidden route to go... then I can play AA or SS XD. Quite looking forward to Music because then I can just hammer that rhythm game. I suppose part of the reason why I'm not getting through the game faster is because I'm obsessed with trying to get an S rank on the songs on the hardest difficulty setting in the rhythm game 8D. Arguably, I'm playing through all the routes to unlock all the songs XD.
I wanted to brush up on my miserable colouring skills so I did a full line art and colour job on the Ren sketch I did last time. I moved his right elbow because his forearm looked a bit short and redrawn the eyebrows and ear but otherwise the lines pretty much follow the sketch.
I tried a different approach with the colouring. I block coloured the hair and then went over it with a low opacity, large sized brush to do the shade and then a higher opacity, smaller brush (brown then yellow) to do section and strands of hair. I used the Addition layer to add those very bright orange strands and smudged in the roots a bit to blend it into the rest of hair. I also used the Luminescence layer to add vibrancy and create that anime halo.
The skin shading boggled my mind a bit. The first time I did it, the light was all over the place and it looked horrendous. It was so bad I had to bin it and start again -_-;;. I tried again and started with basics, drew an orb and light arrows towards him. I drew chunks of light and shade on his face (+ base = 3 colours) and then blended it in with the water and airbrush tools. The difference in blending between the two tools is that water dilutes down the colour and smudges it whilst airbrushing, the edges are soft and the colour is direct but doesn't lose the colour. I think water blends better but airbrushing helps keep the colour. Blending in larger chunks of colour seems to have achieved a smoother and more consistent look than my usual "smudging around with the water tool till it looks about right" method. The neck and chest was difficult for me because I didn't quite understand where the shading was meant to go ^_^;;. Maybe I should spend more time staring at studying torsos or something XD. After I was happy with shading, I toggled around with the Hue, Saturation, Contrast, Depth, Luminescence settings until I got a nice vibrant colour on the skin. I was surprised that the base colour is a lot more saturated (more orange) than what would normally choose, which was interesting. I then used an Addition layer to very gently add more shine to his cheeks, nose and lips, bish shine is incredibly important ^_^;;. I also used an Addition layer to bring shine to his eyes. I also put small, dark, gentle strokes in the eyes to break up the strong light blue to give it more of an iris effect. It's not that noticeable but contributes to the overall picture subtly.
The clothes were coloured more like my usual style although with the tie, I found the Multiply layer to be very helpful because it meant that I could shade the tie with just one colour and all on the same layer. Particularly useful for shading creases.
The background was done in Photoshop. I finally mustered up some courage to do something with it XD. I didn't actually draw anything. I picked a bunch of filters and shoved them through some strange settings and played with the colour filters until I got an abstract patterned background 8D. Moved it back into SAI and went over the light bit with a bit of airbrushing with a different colour, played with the colour settings again and settled on that ^_^;;. I generally consider getting anything out of Photoshop to be a success XD.
Bizarrely, I think this version makes Ren look more Caucasian than the sketch which I consider to look fairly Japanese, not sure why ^_^;;. Overall, I like how the hair, the eyes, the lips and the face in general have come out. It's probably my best soft shading pictures I've done to date and whilst there's still lots of room for improvement, for now, I'm fairly happy with it. Not sure about the nose because I tried to take the line out, I had to mold/paint him a nose and not doing a real one looked rather odd so I stuck with the anime nose. In the end, I've ended up with a strange mix of realistic style blending and anime style features ^_^;;;.
Funny enough, Ren isn't one of my favourite characters and yet I think I spent quite a bit of time (relative) on this one. I think part of the reason I've redone this picture is probably because I quite liked the pose and expression and couldn't help but feel that there's more I could do with it. I was listening to Ren's character songs (which I have generally avoided because he's not my cup of tea) for inspiration and now I've got them stuck in my head. My conclusion is that any of the UtaPuri songs (or indeed any songs by Elements Garden), even the ones you're not keen on, will eventually get stuck in your head... On a sort of related note, they did the OP for BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend ^_^;; (and the new character, Relius, looks like a purple version of Char, has a robot for support moves and is voiced by the same VA as Ren XD).
Oh yeah, I'm not that hard up on seiyuus in general but Maaya Sakamoto and Kenichi Suzumura married in August this year :o. Maaya Sakamoto is Muso's favourite ^_^;;, she did Hitomi in Escaflowne and Haruhi in Ouran. Kenichi Suzumura did Masato in UtaPuri, someone in Gundam Seed Destiny (not a Gundam fan so can't say who ^_^;;;) and also Hikaru in Ouran so in terms of Ouran, Haruhi hitched up with Hikaru *brain explodes* XD.
Anyway, a rehash of the Class A guys...
I compiled them into one picture. They were quite similar in size so it wasn't much work. Made Natsuki a had taller and added the title which was harder than it looks because of charms ^_^;;.
I finished Natsuki's route the other day. I'd say he's more of a Pieces than a Gemini myself but the makers chose Gemini because of his condition. Haruka cries a lot here but I'm less sympathetic because half of it is her own fault and the other half is her feeling sorry for him (which irritates Satsuki). Satsuki's departure was quite touching although the problem I have is I don't really believe in the integration thing but I suppose there is something quite charming about the violent Satsuki so it would be a shame if he was gone. Shining does seem to appear a lot more in Otoya and Tokiya's paths because relatively, he didn't seem to crop up in Natsuki's as much. One bit which I found hilarious was the gang trying to tell Natsuki that Shining's diagnosis during the physical examination is wrong and nominated Masato to imitate Shining (how they decided that he's closest to Shining's stature, I don't know XD). It's a shame there isn't a CG or a game sprite for it but the stoic mimicking of Shining Engrish was enough for me XD.
Nearly there-ish, 2 + 1 hidden route to go... then I can play AA or SS XD. Quite looking forward to Music because then I can just hammer that rhythm game. I suppose part of the reason why I'm not getting through the game faster is because I'm obsessed with trying to get an S rank on the songs on the hardest difficulty setting in the rhythm game 8D. Arguably, I'm playing through all the routes to unlock all the songs XD.