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Going from a quick sketch to finished piece.


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I start with a simple sketch.
First a quick pose, then refining that pose and adding clothing. Sketching is done with the pencil tool at 72dpi for speed. 1
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Once I have a sketch I like, I blow the document up to 300 or 360dpi and ink it, often with Painter. 7
Next I'll use the pencil tool to block in an outline of the whole image, then fill it with the paint bucket tool. 8

I lock the layer, and using the pencil and paint bucket again I'll block out the various color sections.

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I use the pencil tool because my next steps involve using the magic wand to select areas of color. If all my areas of color are aliased (ie, hard-edged) the wand has much less trouble selecting areas without mixing edge colors. The lines on an upper layer will easily cover up the hardness of the pencil tool edges.

With the airbrush tool on a low opacity (10-20%), and my tablet settings on vary opacity and size I sketch in the ring of fire. This I will use as a guide to lighting on the character, and overall direction for later when I finish the ring. 10

I use the magic wand with antialias unchecked to select the tail, then CTRL+J to promote that to a new layer, and lock (preserve transparency).

With the airbrush on vary opacity only, I use a medium sized brush with a hardness around 70% to sculpt in dark areas of the tail, then go back to 'sharpen' with a lighter color, then use screen to add highlights.

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Alas, I do not like how the tail looks, so I start over, but with the brush a bit softer.

This time the tail looks to soft.. like clay or bad 3D modeling. My brush settings were softer this time, and I used the push tool. So I scratch this version too, and decide to move on.

I'll come back to the tail again later.

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Next I move onto the creamy colored fur. I want this to be almost buttery-golden when I finish, but with some nice purple hues in the darker shadows for dramatic effect. Using the airbrush on a low opacity, varying opacity, I use the same add dark, soften edge with light technique of before.For the final lights I use the airbrush on screen.

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