Camaraderie

Started this a while back...XD supposed to be a Christmas present for a friend, but I copped out and ended up giving her a bitty stuffed baby chocobo instead.

So, quick color, because I liked the posing of the original test sketches - though they were a radical departure from the art-deco-inspired look I was originally after (the fancy border thing died early on; so did the direct profile posing). I also wanted to work with coloring on addition/dodge/screen/overlay layers. For those unfamiliar with it, this technique basically starts by creating color via "light" on a darker background instead of flatcolor. You're creating positive space. I love the near-tangible glow this technique produces, and the way images seem to "pop" off the page more...I can't think of too many off the top of my head, but 's webcomic dream*scar seems to employ a variation of it pretty well, as does the fabulous in some of her colorings for Lackadaisy.

I also wanted to depart a bit from the stereotypical "well, I can choose a landscape-oriented rectangle, or a portrait-oriented one...which will it be? -.-;; " So I went with the distressed-edge vellum look; however...because I generally like to color in openCanvas, which does not have the capability to save transparency in .PNG files, I ended up exporting the whole thing over to GIMP and finishing it up over there. All-in-all, though it's still a bit rough around the edges - the drawing, not the bg texture ) I think I got what I was looking for.

Paper template by ~Ayelie-stock.