Bouncer Kara WIP

This is, at least so far, the best thing I've ever submitted to dA.

More experimentation with PhotoShop. Getting the hang of colors [finally!] and tablet, indeed... My god, Kara took 2 hours alone, just for getting all the lighting and shadow... I have about thirty layers, just for her. Maybe less, but not by much.

I'm also working on a background, can you see? As a joke, for the time being, I'm naming the strip club behind her, "Shalashaska's." Bonus cookie to those who get the reference.

I'm still -very- proud of how this turned out. Yeah, her abs are a little overdone, as I always do with her, but I -am- trying to convey her muscular tone at least decently. Probably should have done her arms a little more. Might go back and do it later. I haven't done the tattoos yet, mostly intentionally, because I'm not sure how to do them properly. More experimentation, I suppose. I guess just go over it in black at half opacity. I love her hair, too. That one gave me a lot of trouble.

Y'know the cruddy thing? There aren't any good tutorials on devArt on this kind of thing. I mean, I can only get good bits and pieces out of each one. I can't find -one- good color tutorial that encompasses [at least clearly] everything I -need- to know.

So what did I do? I figured it out for myself. I found one decent hair tutorial that merely showed me the picture of his progress, not of the actual program he was working in. So I worked from there. I used a base color that was probably too light, but I evened it out by using dark strands all over, and only using a few light ones where the light actually hit.

Another thing I'm proud of is that I remained mostly consistent with my lighting. I can't find at least any one spot that jumps out at me as being improperly lit... I'm really proud of this. Beaming, in fact.

Oh! Couple more things. The original lineart was also done in Photoshop, on a separate layer, of course. I only drew in the very basics, adding in the actual detail as I went along. She slimmed down in the final lineart, which looks alright, but her hips aren't as broad as they should be. That perturbs me. But! The full product makes up for it.

Last thing, the next image I do in PS is gonna be an experimentation in NOT USING LINEART. I'm going to see if I can successfully use just shadows and highlights to make a decent, realistic "border" of the character. Or, maybe I should stick with this for a while and get good at filling in between the lines for now, and wait before I experiment again.

Anyway.

Kara [c] MEH