CYBERPUNK2077: Process + Final + Wallpaper! (Patreon)

Hello Patrons,

This is is my big large version of my newest drawing featuring the two main characters (OR SINGLE MAIN CHARACTER, HA!) V and Johnny Silverhand from the hit video game Cyberpunk 2077, made by popular game developer CD Projekt Red, who also made flesh.png's other favorite videogame, Witcher 3. A brief lore tidbit is essentially, V is a girlypop (or man depending on what you choose) who is doing a heist of some sort in the future. She is stealing this chip from this big corporation and then its container breaks so the only safe place to put it is ultimately her BRAIN. Turns out, there is an entire man's personality on it (Johnny, played by Keanu Reeves) and shes like no I don't want him in my head. And that is what the whole game revolves around.

This was a terrible and long journey to draw but at the same time it was fun and great because I was drawing these two crazy sons of guns. It began with simply drawing a screenshot of V in the Apple Notes app, my favorite drawing application.

I believe this is actually a notes app drawing that has been enhanced in Fresco, so sorry to be misleading. But notably I have chunked out different areas of lighting with different colors and her hair is short. This is good to know because it becomes irrelevant very quickly. But it was helpful in the sketching process to figure out proportions, which I also change.

Next, the drawing as a whole composition is planned in Fresco. Frankly this might be my favorite part of drawing. Its so rough but its fun and messy and frankly looks good. 

As you can see, I've put her off to the side, changed her hair, and added little Johnnys. I wanted them to be small and sort of glitchy (something I forgot until the last second) because that is how he is depicted! He is also always depicted as leaning on something. I think the drawing to me is like V is trying to live her life and Johnny is like the little devil on her shoulder or the back of her head being kind of annoying. This is what I subtly hint at.

Now the crazy part begins: rendering. I had SO MUCH trouble with this. The foundational reference I used for the pose had BAD lighting. Usually, this is fine because I supplement it with a different reference for lighting. That is what I did for this one, and I figured it would be fine because I am changing her look anyways to be a more vague V, semi-inspired by characters from Edgerunners (the Cyberpunk animated show). At this point it just looks like Aurora. But, as I was rendering her more I simply hated it. It was too brown, whereas I wanted it to be pink and neony colored like this previous stage. Here is what ensued:

I like this but it just wasn't hitting for the purposes of this drawing. Also, using a reference of V from slightly above and a lighting reference from slightly below was throwing me off. 

SO I end up using the lighting reference from the character customization menu, which has a redness and a greenness to it. Quite complicated, but fun! Here is the first stage of that rendering:

I immediately like this more and begin to pursue this direction. Here are further stages:

I can't say much about this process other than I wanted it to not be super smooth, so I use pretty textured brushes and try not to blend too much. I also used some brightly colored lineart (on the eyelids, around the nostrils, and around the corneas) to give it a more illustrative VIBE.

As you can see, the rendering of the face and body is getting along, but the hair is giving me trouble!!!! I don't know why I didn't look up reference.. but I didn't. I was trying to do this without using reference: But it isn't as good from the front!!

Anyways, I also just hated the silhouette and she was too girlypop idk that wasn't the V I KNOW... so I essentially spent hours on this drawing just to revert it back to its original form:

Then, I attempted to draw the Johnnys digitally but it wasn't giving either. It was too detailed and clean. So I drew them in my sketchbook and put them in there. This is the raw sketchbook form with jank proportions.

And again, so you don't have to scroll back up, here is the final. I added the glitchy effect on Procreate over the Johnny area (something I don't really recommend because it pixelates the entire area and lowers quality).

Thats it!!!

WALLPAPER!!: