A while back I shared how I go about drawing mash-ups. For funsies, today I‘ve decided to share the process for last week’s League of Legends mash-up. You can click on any picture to enlarge it.
First, of course, is deciding who’ll play who. In this case, I decided that Nektara would be dressing up as Ashe. This was my first choice and it survived the revision I made after completing the Red Rich – Xin Zhao mash-up.
Finding good reference pictures is always critical. Ideally, I’ll find a full-body picture in a pose I want to draw. In Ashe’s case, I had to use two different reference pics to supplement one another.
Next comes the sketching. I always start with the general shape of my character’s head large enough to fill the screen. In Nektara’s case, that’s a simple oval. I add her facial features to match the pose in the reference pic and then start sketching the outlines of the costume, whether it be hairstyle or a helmet. I then work my way down with a rough body in the pose I need and then adding all the costume elements.
When a character is holding something in front of him or herself, I use a different layer for the object being held, simply so I could fiddle with the object without having to erase parts of the character. Once I’m satisfied with the object, I’ll add a layer between the two and painted in white beneath the object so that the parts of the costume beneath will not be visible without actually affecting either layer. I like it when I’m inking I only see the sketch lines I need. I work this way so if I decide to retouch the top layer later I won’t have to redo any bits of the bottom layer that I would have to otherwise erase.
In this case, I had already finished a complete sketch before I decided that I didn’t like it and wanted to start over. Here’s the original sketch.
Next comes inking. When I started doing mash-ups with sketches I would ink by simply tracing over the lines bit by bit. The problem is my hand is unsteady that the linework was… shaky. Now I go for broader strokes of the pen which gives me more fluid lines. I’ll use several layers and switch between them when the lines intersect. That way if I go over (and I often do) I can erase the extraneous bits without affecting any other lines. When there are a lot of little lines, I’ll sometimes stick to the same layer and just try to be more careful when I have to erase. Generally, the more intricate the costume, the more layers I’ll need. I think the smallest number of ink layers I’ve needed recently is four. For Nektara as Ashe, I used five.
When inking is done, I’ll hide the sketch layers to be left with just the finished inks.
After coming comes colouring. To colour, I add a layer between the sketch and the ink layers and just colour within the lines as I would with a pencil. As I go I’ll find places where I wasn’t clean in erasing overextended lines and need to do little touch ups to the ink layers. I have to keep reminding myself to go back to the colour layer before continuing to colour. Sometimes I’ll forget and have to undo several steps, which can be frustrating. Fortunately, I usually notice before I reach the buffer limit for actions I can undo.
Finally, comes what I call shading. For inking and colouring, I always use a marker brush because they leave solid opaque lines. For shading, I’ll use a different brush (MyPaid calls it a Modeling brush) that’s more subtle. There’s a lot of palette switching involved as I to try to blend the colours to give the desired lighting effects. I most enjoy shading leather (belts and pouches) and metal (weapons and buckles). Clothing is trickier as I try to create the illusion of subtle folds in the fabric, with varying degrees of success. Of late, I’ve started to use more than one layer for shading. Because the brushes I use are wider, there’s more chance for overrun. If I use two layers, it’s easier to erase the overrun of one colour without affecting the shading I’ve done on the bordering colour. This is the first time I used three layers.
Sometimes, there are glowing effects required. These will require their own layers, one beneath the colour layer to serve as a base and a second on top of the ink layers to better sell the effect. There were no glowing effects required this time.
And there you have it. A finished mash-up.
