Behind the scenes art process (2) (Patreon)

Expanding on the post about the process behind creating the art for Chapter 8, here are some more WIP pics, this time from the scene between Holly and Ivy. 

As I explained in the previous post, the first step in creating the scene is figuring how the action is going to play out and decide how many illustrations will be needed, and which poses, angles and shots to use. Often times I can't find the perfect reference image, and in that case I need to get a bit more creative and put some extra time and effort in the planning stages. In these cases, I sketch over the reference images very loosely, modifying proportions, hairstyles and faces to match my characters. Sometimes I also create collages, merging two or more different images to get what I'm looking for, cropping arms, faces, characters...

It's easy to trust on the underlying picture when tracing the drawing, but I try to be aware of proportions and anatomy. Camera lenses can distort the image, and some angles can make some body parts hard to translate into line-work, and that can cause the final drawing to look weird sometimes.

I've been using this method for a long time to produce a lot of illustrations quickly, but as I take more time to polish the final artwork, I'm also trying to push the limits of it's comfort zone so I don't have to rely so strongly on the reference picture, allowing me more freedom to develop the scenes visually. I'm also trying to add more variety and number of illustrations per scene, and roughly animating some of those, sometimes through small variations on the images, and sometimes using two or three frames to suggest the illusion of movement more strongly. More on that on future posts.