Process of making "That's him!"

Verric speaking here!

Here are the steps in making my picture "That's him!", which I will be releasing on my dA shortly.


Click to enlarge


I'm sure I have an unecessarily convoluted process, but here we go!

1. Draw and 2. Ink it. For this picture, it took longer than normal because originally I wanted to set it in a train station.

3. Scan it. Alter lineart as needed- e.g. cleaning stray lines. I have to smooth them out too, but that's to discuss another day. I make a colour copy of this lineart, and print it out.

4. Colour it in! As you can see, I have a very limited colour palette. For this picture, I used 15 different markers (Copics and Trias). The colours can often scan up differently, but I'm not too fussed, as I use this as a base for altering digitally. I also wanted tis picture to be a little textured so I used some colour pencils for detailing and shading. With white ink I put in highlights on the chair and the policemen's helmets. In this stage, because the lineart is so pale, the characters tend to look like they have eyes that stare into your soul. I coloured his eyes in just to prevent myself being scared ;)

5. I scanned the colours in and lined both of them up, with the lineart on top on multiply. It must be lined up perfectly. Thats why the lineart of the colour is printed pale, in case I get it wrong. (Also, it prevents it being too noticable if the copic makes the printer ink bleed - which it shouldn't do. However, I've been using very cheap printer inks lately and there's slight bleeding.)

6. Digital hocus pocus time! I put some stone texture for the background, which made it a bit grittier. I put some leather for the seat, which I'm not very happy with. Darker shadows and highlights are brushed in. As you can see, the colours have changed a bit, as I had trouble deciding how saturated I wanted it. Lastly, I slap on the logo and slip in the text at the bottom.

So that is how I make a colour picture. Sometimes backgrounds and different figures are drawn seperately, depending on what is needed. A background is drawn seperately if it has lots of colours, detail or very likely to bleed.

Thanks for reading!