The Making of "Valkyrur"

For this week's painting, I decided to do a painting on an awesome tactical strategy video game turned into an equally awesome anime, Valkyria Chronicles. I have ideas for more complicated pieces based on the series, but for this one, I'm just focusing on my character skills.

Step 1: Rough (1 hour)
This week, I'm trying out a new process. For the first step, I set up the digital rough for where my colors will go in the next step. I used Poser 8 as the anatomy reference, and watched some pieces of the anime again to get references for her costume and gear.

Step 2: Color Flats and Base Toning (4 hours)
With the rough as my guide, I set the base colors for the piece, using the lasso tool and the round brush set to pen pressure control for opacity and flow. I also used some render clouds for the sky, and various blend modes throughout.

Step 3: Texturing, More Shading, and Effects (1 hour)
For this step, I added in textures to the weapons, sand, and sky. I also added in smoke and scattered sand where mortars are hitting around her, and the glow that comes from when the character uses her deus ex machina powers.

Step 4: Finalizations (1.5 hours)
I fixed the smoke to make it look more like mortars had hit. I decided to try keeping the main character the focus by making the mortar hits seem a bit aged, with the fire dimmer, the sand and smoke more dispersed, and the sand in a falling trajectory over her.

 I did it using a combination of the the round brush, and a number of explosion brushes I created, using a photo of some clouds I took along with this video for reference: link





















Made between August 26 to September 2
Total Time: 7.5 hours
Materials/Programs: Wacom Cintiq 15x, Photoshop CS6, Poser 8