Process Breakdown: Princess Mononoke - June's Riso Subscription Print! (Patreon)

Hello again!

I'm back in my studio with proper access to my photoshop files so I can create the step by step breakdown of the Princess Mononoke piece for you! Here are some behind the scenes shots and images for June's Riso Subscription print, which headed out recently to patrons who paid on June 1st--

(image above) --I simultaneously hate and love when the registration is off- I'm always anticipating a little deviation but when this happens it always shocks me...and also excites me a little bit.

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Sketches

Ok first, I have to start by saying Ghibli's Princess Mononoke is one of my all time favorite films, and when I started making the Ghibli series I was eagerly awaiting making the Mononoke print. When I first saw this film it was such a different mood than the other Miyazaki movies I'd grown to love, and it was thrilling to see such ancient and spiritual themes depicted so gracefully in an animated film. It absolutely changed the course of my work and made me fall even deeper in love with the dense forests of the Appalachian mountains near where I grew up.

So what I like to do when I start a piece is just sit and think about what kind of image, for me, would best embody the spirit of the film. I tried not to look at many other Mononoke posters, if I look at too much of what's out there already then I'll never be able to get it out of my head **but I do think looking at what's been done after initial sketches is vital, just so I'm not doing anything too cliche or unknowingly copying any work that's come before mine! I like to think about what moments from the movie were inspiring to me and what really moves me to care so deeply about these characters. I love a balance of characters and environment- and their interaction (especially important for this film), so I wanted to indulge in drawing as many characters as I could without complicating the scene too much.

Once I had a rough idea of the mood of this piece, I like to throw down a composition quickly that feels right. Sometimes I do a few, this one I was pretty excited about the first design. I wanted them looking at each other, like in the screenshot above, but with greater emotion and a more dynamic pose. I like to use a big chunky round brush in photoshop so I can jot down a few big main shapes and give myself a quick guide before jumping into the rough line art sketches.

I turned the opacity down on my rough shape guide and added in some scratchy lines to understand the movement of the piece and maybe a few more details. Heads of characters are really my main concern here- where am I going to leave space for everyone? Where are bodies facing, where are faces looking? ...Do you like my rough Yakul? LMAO. At this stage I also really like to have a massive eraser brush handy so I can throw lines down and carve into them with the eraser as messily as I want.

After that I turn the opacity down on that rough sketch layer and do a final sketch on top of it, a little tighter than before. I like to go through several sketch phases so I can feel very confident heading into the line art. It's also a great warm-up exercise to do a few iterations of the design- I'll feel really excited to finally lay down that final line art. 

Color Sketch

I wanted to jump into this piece with a color sketch, just so I had a plan of what to do with some of the greens and browns in the piece. Since a majority of the background is green I wanted to see where I could break up the greens to make more dynamic shapes. When I'm making color sketches like these I know it's not a perfect guide, but a place to start when I'm choosing colors for the Riso. RGB colors never look perfect when printing for the Riso anyway so best I can do is try and get the general color sense and values right. 

Final Line Art

When I start on the final line art I like to try and match the lines in my sketch as much as possible to keep the drawing as loose and fluid as I can. At this stage I make sure to only draw the necessary shapes and leave all the fine details to the 'extra line' layer, with all my scratchy added-value lines (although sometimes I can't help myself, like with the little bug/fungus dot shapes and the texture in the grass and Yakul's fur). I like to draw in the color blue because that's what my final line art color will be so it'll help me choose colors that will harmonize well later. 

Extra line art layer

In a separate layer I'll add all the extra scratchy lines that really bring the piece to life! Sometimes I'll do this after I color and sometimes I'll do it before, just in case I need to plus up some values and differentiate shapes from one another or give a space more depth. Basically for this stage I don't follow an exact timeline- with every piece it's different and I go with the flow of what I feel I need to do next based on how the drawing is going. 

Flats

After I do the basic line art I'll use flats to block in shapes so Riso coloring is easier. This just means I'm making a map for myself so I can grab the shapes with the magic wand tool and change or add colors and textures to that shape easily. If I were to add a gradient to the trees behind Princess Mononoke then I'd grab the shapes of the trees on the flats layer, create a new layer and add the gradient to that new layer, rather than on my flats layer. And later, if I decide I don't like that gradient I can just delete the layer and grab the trees shape again and try a different gradient with the same shape. TLDR it's a way for me to be less destructive with my layers so I can make endless edits later, something I find very helpful for working with Riso. Sometimes I use the flats to make a closer final color mock up as well, but sometimes I get lazy and just add random colors and decide what the colors will actually be in the final mock-up with the Riso layers. 

Final Riso Color Mock-up

This is my mock-up for what I hope my final Riso piece will look like! I know I'll still need to make some tweaks when it's printed, but for the most part this is how I intend my piece to be printed. It's made up of three colors- fluorescent pink (using a close match but not perfect for RGB), yellow and blue. I'll make a group layer for all three colors and add layers of different opacities below each corresponding group. So blue group will have a 25% opacity layer, a 50% layer, 75% and 100% and I'll add only blue to those layers, all set to multiply, so I can build up the image as if I'm using a light-box for each color. 

Here's what each digital layer looks like! 

Then I'll change each layer to black and white so Riso can read the values- basically I'm just changing the layers to a positive and negative space map so Riso can push ink out through little dots it creates based on how many dots I tell it to create in b&w. If my pink layer is a 50% opacity then it'll be a 50% grey- which means 50% dots made by the Riso on the master (or screen, like in screen printing). If it's 100% opacity the Riso will push all the ink through the master and you'll only see the master's washi texture, not the dot texture. Pretty cool! here's a breakdown of what the whole process looks like:

I'll add this image to the files at the bottom as well so you can read and see it up close too!

Riso Printing

Check out this huge stack of Yellow prints for Mononoke! All in all I made about 900 prints for this print run. That's 400 for Patreon, 300 for my shop and selling at conventions and a very safe 200 margin of error for poorly registered prints that just don't make the cut. They don't go to waste though, they get turned into  business cards and bad print packs later!

This print was made by layering yellow, fluorescent pink and blue- here's what that looks like in the Riso, rather than the digital mock-up! The second image is what the pink looks like on top of the yellow. It layers so nicely!

Here are the steps I took to get the right values. Test one is what my RGB mock-up produced. I adjusted some layers to make it look more like my digital mock-up, doubled the pink layer (something I always have to do on my machine, it doesn't read values 35-65% very well), and turned the blue layers down a bit so they weren't so overpowering. I'm usually doing these edits on my black and white layers. Then test two is almost right but the values in the tree trunks behind Mononoke were still very similar, so I darkened the background behind the trees and added some pink in the mushrooms and felt good to go! Usually if I'm going to remake a master I'll change a few other things that are minor, just because I can...but usually I want to change very little from the original colors. 

After the final test I was ready to print! Here's what the machine looks like that I print on- a single drum Riso 590U. 

And here are the close up shots of the final print again! Hope you had a nice time reading this, also hope it's helpful! Enjoy ^_^

I love the gradient in Yakul's fur, from a deep warm tone red to a bright yellow-orange. I felt Yakul’s fur was too large of an orange shape so I added a gradient to make that space more dynamic.

When I sketched out the twisted branch/root decorative border I messily added this little overhang knob and decided to keep it, knowing I’d find something for it later. It ended up being the perfect place for the Forest Spirit, creating a more ancient looking space for it to preside over the scene.

Monthly Patreon Card

This package contained one Princess Mononoke print and a monthly Patreon card inspired by the print and made with the same colors.

For June's $35 support tier I sent out the two Cat Cafe prints I made for the From Here to Sunday show in Brooklyn, plus the little eggy devil print that I made in tandem with my hat! July's package will include the Jet Set radio piece I did for my friend Wren's Jet Set Generation zine. Excited to share more soon!

If you missed out on getting this print in the mail for the Riso Subscription you can still snag it in my shop! It's not $15 in my shop because this space acts like a blind box and creative playspace for me to make fun Riso prints without pressure! but I try to keep my prints affordable and accessible by keeping them around the same price you might pay for a nice book or a t-shirt. As always, thank you so much for the support and I hope you enjoyed this process post for my Princess Mononoke Riso print! 

xoxo -Natalie