Fun_JelloKnightTheRevenge

I wanted to try coloring some old lines for my daily Twitter post, and decided to push it a little further for a Friday Removal post, too.

This is the Twitter version, which I managed to do in under an hour or so (notable because I'm pretty slow). The image, as I recall, came from a study of a slime-monster-based helmet that a character was wearing in a drawing I saw online. I'd been trying to make that same kind of concept for a while, and finally gave it a shot with this drawing, and now at long last, we get to see what it might look like in living color.

This is what it looks like before all the blurring.

And this is just the background photo, which I took in the outskirts of Tokyo, as unmodified as possible, though I had adjusted the photo itself more greenward.

Here is what the colors look like devoid of lines. I wanted to make it look like she's in the slime creature's mouth, so her shirt, while originally blue, got modified to a more tongue-like deep red. I wonder if I should have continued the slime-green down the front, so instead of extended gums, we get a more closed-mouth look to the slime gear.

This is just the flat colors, no additives. I flat each color group on a separate layer, roughly in order of externality, and then I modify those layers as I wish and then clip them all back onto the base mask, which is usually the skin color. I tried to go with cel-shading on this, to break me from my habit of getting too carried away with the painting, but I kinda only semi-met that goal. I started with basic two tones on each, but then it went to three on a couple early layers, and then I ended up doing a little more painting for the face in particular. Fortunately, I didn't get too swept up in painting too much beyond that.

One part I did end up making a point to paint a little was the "lines" layer, which was the layer that had the drawing itself. The paper texture on that layer was quite heavy (I drew it on paper and captured it with my camera), so I went in and clipped some softening colors back onto this layer with the drawing to ease the grit of the piece. This necessarily takes some amount of painting, otherwise it's too brutal a transition from papery texture to smooth digital colors.

This is what the lines look like blocked in. With clipping, I can modify the colors on the inside of the drawing area, and then with masking, I can modify the background as I wish, say by adding in a photo. I used adjustment layers, too, to brighten and harmonize everything up a little more, as the Twitter version seemed just a little dark. I seem to enjoy making images a little darker than they should be, at least as compared to my phone. Images look fine on my computer, but my phone tends to show them a little darker than I'd intend...

All right, I feel like I learned a little on this one.

Reuxben