PROGRESS SHOTS (not an entry) of Birthday Gift

The following is a description of different stages I went through to make my entry for 's Fan Art Contest (For more info on the competition check out the details here [link]

1. Thumbnailing was by far the hardest part of the whole process. I had many ideas but it was difficult to pick out a good piece from amongst them. I eventually narrowed it down to images that would depict Otto and Victoria fan-girling over something or someone, to fit the idea of a fan art competition. At first I wanted to depict Victoria walking into her sitting room to discover Otto has been painting a giant portrait (of either Ursula or Victoria) on the wall in his own ink. As you can see in these thumbnails I struggled to depict Victoria's reaction - a mixture of awe at the portrait and horror/anger that he has ruined her wallpaper! But in the end it seems I struggled because I didn't have the heart to make Victoria cross with poor Otto haha! Instead I settled on an alternative: Victoria has just given otto a very special gift; the art book he's been wanting for so long (I thought this was pretty relevant with the contest )

2. Sketching (which was done with a red animation pencil) came very easy once I had decided on this idea. Thanks to Otto for being such an expressive character! I somehow ended up making Victoria younger, but rather than try to "fix it" I just went with it, because to me the image began to look like one of their first birthday celebrations together which made me go awwww _{Maybe Otto gave Victoria her first pair of goggles earlier that day??}

3. Next, up Testing. My favourite part - coming up with colour schemes! I began testing out different media and colours to see what would suit the image. I had originally intended to do this piece traditionally, so these tests are done in ProMarkers, Polychromos pencils and fine-liners. Unfortunately there were issues with wasted markers and paper to deal with, so it ended up a half traditional/half digital piece (as much of my dA gallery is)

4. Line art, done in Polychromos, is pretty self-explanatory. This part tends to make or break me as an artist, as I often loose a lot of the initial energy and gesture from my sketches. I tried my best not to let the image become too static. I guess Brian will have to be the judge of that!

5. Colouring was done in Photoshop CS5. I loved putting Victoria in a dress that complemented her hair colour. I stuck to cel shading with a general lighting scheme (I tried a single light source but it looked a bit harsh and too dramatic for a happy-go-lucky scene like this)

6. To finalise the image, I adjusted the overall colour and contrast with adjustment layers and then added textures. The resources I used for the textures were mainly from Imagine FX (The book cover, the grunge texture on Victoria and the old photograph texture on the overall image). I also used *jhasson's Ink brushes [link] for Otto's skin and =Gasara's Steampunk Custom Box BGs [link] for the background image.
And hey presto that's it!


Here's a link to the final image [link]
Thanks!

Characters © *BrianKesinger
Art © AtticCreationz