This workflow experiment took ages and I blame that primarily on the all digital process I was trying out. Once in a while I start an illustration and it
ends up being the longest, most frustrating journey to an okay
result. A lot of big sighs and the occasional mental breakdown aside I documented the process for future generations.
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| So this is the original idea. A little girl finds her monster-dad hard at work on bills when she get out of bed for a glass of water. I skipped my usual thumb nailing on paper to find a composition and tried to go all digital. |
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| I've decided to add more of an angle to the BG and start figuring out the attitudes and poses of the characters. I initially wanted a sort of muppet like design for the monster. I've got a PS vanishing point grid on top of everything here |
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| I'm looking for a way to suggest the girls bedroom with light or a reflection in a window in the living room. Trying out some fur painting, not happy with it though. I don't really want a realistic fur render. Up to now I've done everything in grayscale. The idea was to get my values right and then add color with the color blending mode. |
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| Adding color that way didn't really work for me so I just used my grey scale as a guide and repainted things. I rescaled and redrew the background elements. I also redesigned the monster, going for a more cartoony render style and ditching the white of the eyes. The pose is still awkward |
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| Trying to place the girl in the BG a little better. Obviously not working out here. Adding a teapot. Getting rid of my table clutter. |
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| Different pose for the girl, messing around with the color palette for the kitchen. |
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| Still looking for a pose for the girl, more changes to the color palette, correcting the monster pose. Teapot disappears. Added in the living room BG. |
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| Started rendering the monster and changing the design again. Looking for better shapes on the head. Changed the girl again, different pose, different colors, different design. Finally satisfied with that. I also closed of the composition by lowering the shadow on the left. |
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| Here I'm adding detail and I'm trying to make the monster's haircut have some depth without losing it's straightforward shape. I also added some eyeballs. |
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| changed the position of the hand with the letter and added additional letters and bills. |
And here's the final result again.
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I've added a little bit of a rimlight on the monster. Took out some
tangents. Subtle textures to my big flat areas of color some kitchen
clutter on the countertop. I desaturated the living room background,
getting those blues closer to my color scheme. During the whole process I
flip the illustration continually to check for wonkiness.
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As frustrating as the process was, I think it turned out alright and I've learned some lessons. Thumb nailing on paper saves me a lot time and designing and redesigning things take a lot longer in PS than they do on paper. PS is great to scale or rearrange compositional elements but in this case I was better off making a final drawing on paper. Perhaps a cintiq would enable me to be more efficient in a digital only workflow.
Here's an animated gif
