The Making of Wiñay Marka

For this week's painting, I decided to make a tribute to one of the best anime I've watched, El Cazador de la Bruja (Hunter of the Witch). The manga is terrible, but the anime is one of the few on the long list of anime that've kept me entertained since childhood that I've watched multiple times without losing any enjoyment for it.

Step 1: Roughs (5 hours, 40 minutes)
I started out the painting by using Alyson and Ryan figures in Poser 8 to set up the basic poses for the piece. I then proceeded to draw a detailed rough, using both the Poser render and several reference photos of the anime. At this point, for whatever reason, I have had a lot easier time so far drawing out the Jody Hayward, Ricardo, and Lirio characters than the main characters Nadie and Ellis. I'm really hoping that I can change that in the next stage.

Step 2: Lineart (4.5 hours)
I next went over all the details with the pen tool, using actual character sheets from the series for the design and costume references. I also refined the placeholders for the background, which will be added in almost entirely with the colors during the next step.

Step 3: Color Flats (6.5 hours)
With my lineart set, I went to work on working the base colors into the painting, using masks, the lasso tool, and the round brush. I did a bit of colorizing without lineart to hold the form anymore, such as with the entire background, the snake around the women's feet, and Ellis's flame.

Step 4: Shading (1 hour, 50 minutes)
For the next step, I set up both a main light source, as well as the glow from Ellis's flame. I then went over everything using black and white with the round brush, with opacity and flow set to pen pressure control, to add shading in. At this point, I also changed the ground so that it looks like one solid scape, as opposed to the difference from the previous step. As a final step to the shading at this stage, I changed the blending modes on the shading layers and added in highlights.

Step 5: Texturing (45 minutes)
After I had the shading set, I turned the background into a SmartObject and adjusted the proportions more. added a number of textures from my photo library, mostly sand and the inside of Woodward Caves, to the image, and set them to various blend modes to mix with the colors I set and the shading. I also made the light source more apparent, but that will be something I decide on in the next and last steps. To finish off the step, I went through and masked out sections of the characters so they interact more with the sand they're standing on.

Step 6: Effects & Finalization (45 minutes)
To finish the piece off, I added more shading and details to the background, as well as making the character seem not like giants. I also worked a bit with the shadows, including fixing the shadow escaping from Ricardo's foot, and made sure they all line up with the light source. I also decided to remove the snake and to keep the sun in.












Made from July 29 to August 2
Time: 20 hours
Materials: Poser 8, Photoshop CS6