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My Technique
My Technique.
This is my technique for the most of the works I've been doing which my Dynasty Warrios 4 collection, I tend to change my technique a lot but have stuck with this one for the full bodied pieces, I get my Pattern/Textile books off of Amazon.com or Chinese or Japanese book stores.
I'll be using one that has been requested, Xiahou Yuan from "Dynasty Warriors 4". This is done in Photoshop 6 with a wacom tablet, I draw directly onto the computer so scanning involved for this particular technique. I start off with 3 layers, Background, sillouette and then an ink layer.
Step 1:
First thing I do is come up with a pose by sillhoutting it on a new layer, because a good sillhouette can make you picture more pleasing to the eye. The pose is the hardest part for me and can take a bunch of tries before I get one that I like. Here is the image:
For this pose it was a bit difficult because of the fact that he is a big guy and his arms are in front of him but I'm happy with this pose.
Step 2:
After I get a sillhouette I like I make a new layer above it and turn down the opacity on the sillhouette layer then I do a rough sketch over it, here is the image:
Step 3:
After I do a rough sketch I then add a new layer called ink on top of the rough sketch layer and turn down the opacity of the rough sketch layer, then I trace over it but with really clean lines, this is the most time consuming step as it takes a really long time to draw all of the details and make it really clean. Here is an image:
I work really large and close up the hand drawn lines are a little shaky but once I shrink the image you cannot tell and it looks really clean. This image is 1600 Width and 2000 Height.
Step 4:
The image is now ready to be colored, here is where I follow a really good tutorial written by Naska over at Pendako, here is the link:
http://pendako.syste.ms/tutorials/basics/basic_cg.html
Starting from "HOW LAYERS WORK".
Here is the image before I group the layers and before the shadows:
Here is what the layers look like:
Step 5:
Ok, this image is what it looks like after I group the layers and start to add the shadows, of caourse you have to chhose a light source before coloring shadows, here is the image:
and here is an image of the layers:
The next step will be pattern overlays.
Step 6:
Ok, all of the shadows are done it's time to do some pattern overlays, I hope I can explain this, here goes, ok I make the selection that I want to have a pattern, here is image:
After I make the selection I then add a new layer above the other layers but under the ink layer and fill the selection with a middle gray, then I click on the pattern overlay button, see image:
Now I myself have a ton of Chinese patterns that I have saved that I use, so now I need to select the one I want for that particular cloth, see image:
It brings up this window, I have already selected my pattern and made it to overlay, sometimes I adjust the scale until it looks good, then I click ok and as you can see in the image the patttern is there. Now on this particular cloth there is a graident, so once again I make the selection add a new layer and fill it with gradient, see image:
A lot of the times I have to adjust the pattern layer as in the brightness and contrast just until it looks good, make sure that that layer is an overlay layer, or soft light, whichever looks better. Here is the image with all of his pattern overlays:
Step 7:
Ok, after all of the pattern overlays I then merge together all of the color layers into one layer ( not the background layer ) then I use the dodge tool to brring out the highlights on the armor, after that I make a new layer above the background layer and selct the character and then fill it with black and turn down the transparency on that layer so it looks light gray, then I distort it to look like a shadow making sure to go with the light source.
Step 8:
Ok, the very last step, I then add a layer to the very top and make it a soft light layer and pick the gradient tool to radial and pick a nice warm color and make a few circles in different areas to give it more color, make sure it's set to color to transparency. Here is the final image:
Good Luck:)
