Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 3

I’m genuinely surprised at how well and easily the basic anatomy and shading on this piece has gone. It’s certainly helped to start with good reference and a strong idea of what I wanted it to be but this has truly gone swimmingly. I’m especially happy with how the right side of the image has come out. It looks like actual musculature and human form. I know that I still have a way to go in doing defined abs and neck but as it stands I’m happy with the progress.

Even though it looks like the piece is done in grayscale, I’ve given up working in pure grayscale. I hate what that does to me later on in the process when I’m trying to color in the skin and I go nuts because it’s just not good enough. But what’s that you say? I’m working in grayscale right now? Ah! that would be the workaround that I’ve found.

I first I did a tonal map to make sure I was only getting the contrast that I wanted. Then I overlaid that with a color layer I then color picked those colors and adjusted them for saturation and tonal value to add warmth to the shadow colors. And boom, perfectly graduated skin tones. However, there’s still another step. In order to make absolutely sure I’m getting the values I want, I set a clipping mask over the body flat layer, set it to saturate and fill the lair with black, rendering everything underneath in grayscale. Then I just paint on a layer clipped between the body flat layer and the saturation layer. And done. I’m working in grayscale for the skin.

Sound complicated, because it is, but I’ve found it really effective at giving me the best of both worlds. My values are on point and underneath the saturation layer it’s going to look really good. I’ve taken a peak and it might well be the best skin job I’ve ever done.

#luxray #gijinka #pokemon #pokemongo #anime #pokemonswordshield #procreate