Mika Misono // Blue Archive ( Pack x 03 Ver. ) (Patreon)

Hey everyone, how's it going...? (・∀・)ﾉ

Sorry for being MIA for a couple of days, as you can see, I've been pretty busy...😅💦

Whew... I can definitely say this is one of the heaviest projects I've had recently, at least in terms of the background. A truly difficult but fun challenge.

Drawing Mika was the easy and fun part; after all, she's such an angel. The real battle here was getting the background right.

To begin with, it's a very famous building designed by a very famous architect (Frank Lloyd Wright). So I had to try to make a faithful representation, at least to the best of my abilities.

To save some time, I traced the basic shapes of the building directly from a photographic reference. However, this only shaved a couple of hours off my work, since the details, textures, and small elements scattered throughout the scene were overwhelming just by themselves...😵💫

In the time-lapse you will see that the process was a wild ride...LOL

Secondly, I really enjoy drawing backgrounds, but that doesn't mean I'm any good at it. You see, anime backgrounds have something really weird about them: they're not quite painterly, but they're not hiperealistic either. So neither of those styles really describes them. I'd say there's a certain over-baked quality to them. You know, almost like a deep-fried meme.

They need to be oversaturated, the contrast is pretty high, and there's an overabundance of special effects and sparkles.

So they're a whole science just by themselves...🎨👨‍🎨✨

But even with all that, I still enjoy working on them.

I'll keep working hard to master their secrets...!