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Description

It's been a while since I made something postable. Basically this all started out with pose practice and me admiring some acrobatic poses and then I reasoned: why not make a Lian piece of this? So here we are.

I was hoping to go for a cleaner look, but I'll have to settle for this. I already spent god knows how many hours on this so this is as good as it gets.

Process:

Started out with a digital sketch where I was only happy about the legs but not the torso, so I redrew the sketch on paper to find a more pleasing pose.

From there I went back to digital to make a silhouette sketch.

While observing the silhouette I'd try taking things into account like proportions but also balance and managed to find and fix some issues (originally her arm was more to the right, which would've meant she'd topple over), but also considering that the hair positioning is going to need to be in line with wether she's flipping forward or backward - plus because her hair has so much volume it's going to be touching / resting on the ground..

Once silhouette was established, I continued with general composition and initial base colors. Initially I went for this triangle thing with a flame coming in from the top and moving towards the bottom left, but it gave me problems when trying to fit in the logo so I ditched that idea.

Instead I decided to make a grassy field with a greenish towards white gradient behind it.

In the meantime I also brainstormed on clothing. I wanted something different, but also realized that anything flowy like ribbons is going to look stupid with that pose because of gravity. Initially I went for shorts and a simple top, but it felt a little bit too skimpy so I went for the asymmetric stretchpants. For a second I thought of jeans, but then dismissed it as that was already done before in the Kenichi anime.

For the shoes I wanted to actually go for those big buffalo white shoes, but my skill level wasn't up for the task even if I'd copy a reference, so I did a different thing and it was painful. I remember spending a full day on making the left shoe look passable (I'm still not happy about it, but this is as good as it gets at my current skill level).

With the grassy field and outfit in place, I wanted to add in one of those puffy clouds, which meant I started to move towards a proper background. Thing is though.. Lian's setting isn't this clean world, there needed to be this city element in it, so I decided to add in 2 backdrop layers to add in depth.

For the pavement I tried to do some tricks I already learned from earlier pieces - I've been a bit more sloppy on this one. If I wanted I could make these tiles reflective/shiny, but it would be a bit weird to do that given the scene.

Composition:

I've been pretty conscious about the composition keeping this diagonal downward thing going. I had to adjust the farthest backdrop to become more level because of her location. I even managed to cram in a golden ratio spiral thingy when placing things like the birds and adjusting the cloud shape. The logo and Lian's face follow the rule of 3rds. Composition of the canvas if you slice it horizontally can be done in 2 but also in 3rds so I'm hoping that this will help improve the experience of the piece.

Colors:

I've been also consciously dividing sections of the piece with my colors with the green transitioning to the sky's cyan and the clouds' shadows being this desaturated purple.

Lian's shirt matches her logo making a connection.

Her tattoo needed the right contrast too eventhough its relatively camouflaged now that i look at it.

The white shoes in front of a white cloud were a little bit tricky but not too much of a difficult problem to solve. I just needed to watch that the cloud's shadow would give enough contrast, not cause bad tangents and not create too much dead space.

For Lian's body I tried keeping things minimal. Just having a cell shaded clean style and adding a light layer via color dodge). I Was trying to go for the quality level that I had in my Ganyu piece, but didn't succeed - so I can't say I'm pleased with the outcome

As a last ditch effort I drew lineart (mainly contour) over Lian and then overpainting those lines with the best colors I could find - something I also did on my Ganyu piece.

Photobashing:

I think this is one of the rare cases where I photobashed. I used a photo of a field of dandelions to fill out a large part of the green field and combined it with leaf brush and blending techniques. I manually painted the lone dandelion though.

For the birds I used black silhouettes, but I painted over the silhouettes with layer lock so they'd look recognizable (I didn't just paste in a picture of birds or anything)

Energy:

I tried using confident brush strokes (applying that brush stroke practice I've been doing all month) to make the cloud swirl a bit, give it a bit of energy and support the composition. Same goes for the lighter bits in the sky. I also could've gone for an even colored sky, but then I'd have to take down the saturation a notch which in turn would impact the clouds lacking contrast to the right side. Highly saturated colors toned down by some white cloud wisps (read: use the eraser) seemed like the best match.

Description

It's been a while since I made something postable. Basically this all started out with pose practice and me admiring some acrobatic poses and then I reasoned: why not make a Lian piece of this? So here we are.

I was hoping to go for a cleaner look, but I'll have to settle for this. I already spent god knows how many hours on this so this is as good as it gets.

Process:

Started out with a digital sketch where I was only happy about the legs but not the torso, so I redrew the sketch on paper to find a more pleasing pose.

From there I went back to digital to make a silhouette sketch.

While observing the silhouette I'd try taking things into account like proportions but also balance and managed to find and fix some issues (originally her arm was more to the right, which would've meant she'd topple over), but also considering that the hair positioning is going to need to be in line with wether she's flipping forward or backward - plus because her hair has so much volume it's going to be touching / resting on the ground..

Once silhouette was established, I continued with general composition and initial base colors. Initially I went for this triangle thing with a flame coming in from the top and moving towards the bottom left, but it gave me problems when trying to fit in the logo so I ditched that idea.

Instead I decided to make a grassy field with a greenish towards white gradient behind it.

In the meantime I also brainstormed on clothing. I wanted something different, but also realized that anything flowy like ribbons is going to look stupid with that pose because of gravity. Initially I went for shorts and a simple top, but it felt a little bit too skimpy so I went for the asymmetric stretchpants. For a second I thought of jeans, but then dismissed it as that was already done before in the Kenichi anime.

For the shoes I wanted to actually go for those big buffalo white shoes, but my skill level wasn't up for the task even if I'd copy a reference, so I did a different thing and it was painful. I remember spending a full day on making the left shoe look passable (I'm still not happy about it, but this is as good as it gets at my current skill level).

With the grassy field and outfit in place, I wanted to add in one of those puffy clouds, which meant I started to move towards a proper background. Thing is though.. Lian's setting isn't this clean world, there needed to be this city element in it, so I decided to add in 2 backdrop layers to add in depth.

For the pavement I tried to do some tricks I already learned from earlier pieces - I've been a bit more sloppy on this one. If I wanted I could make these tiles reflective/shiny, but it would be a bit weird to do that given the scene.

Composition:

I've been pretty conscious about the composition keeping this diagonal downward thing going. I had to adjust the farthest backdrop to become more level because of her location. I even managed to cram in a golden ratio spiral thingy when placing things like the birds and adjusting the cloud shape. The logo and Lian's face follow the rule of 3rds. Composition of the canvas if you slice it horizontally can be done in 2 but also in 3rds so I'm hoping that this will help improve the experience of the piece.

Colors:

I've been also consciously dividing sections of the piece with my colors with the green transitioning to the sky's cyan and the clouds' shadows being this desaturated purple.

Lian's shirt matches her logo making a connection.

Her tattoo needed the right contrast too eventhough its relatively camouflaged now that i look at it.

The white shoes in front of a white cloud were a little bit tricky but not too much of a difficult problem to solve. I just needed to watch that the cloud's shadow would give enough contrast, not cause bad tangents and not create too much dead space.

For Lian's body I tried keeping things minimal. Just having a cell shaded clean style and adding a light layer via color dodge). I Was trying to go for the quality level that I had in my Ganyu piece, but didn't succeed - so I can't say I'm pleased with the outcome

As a last ditch effort I drew lineart (mainly contour) over Lian and then overpainting those lines with the best colors I could find - something I also did on my Ganyu piece.

Photobashing:

I think this is one of the rare cases where I photobashed. I used a photo of a field of dandelions to fill out a large part of the green field and combined it with leaf brush and blending techniques. I manually painted the lone dandelion though.

For the birds I used black silhouettes, but I painted over the silhouettes with layer lock so they'd look recognizable (I didn't just paste in a picture of birds or anything)

Energy:

I tried using confident brush strokes (applying that brush stroke practice I've been doing all month) to make the cloud swirl a bit, give it a bit of energy and support the composition. Same goes for the lighter bits in the sky. I also could've gone for an even colored sky, but then I'd have to take down the saturation a notch which in turn would impact the clouds lacking contrast to the right side. Highly saturated colors toned down by some white cloud wisps (read: use the eraser) seemed like the best match.