MY!! - Misty FanArt Re-Redesign WIP

[storm bolt]

Been wanting to redo this one for a while, in late 2018 i had to come up with an idea for a character design class, and there was this CDC (Character Design Challenge) going on on facebook that gave me this idea, redesign a pokemon trainer but in the Art Direction of Overwatch...

Now that i look at it, i feel i could have done a much better job, even though this was 5 years ago, i still do not like her face that much, and there are details of her outfit that don't really look so Overwatch at all... But hey... well, i guess i improved since that day haha, for now the flats don't look that sexy at all... but i know once i start working on the shading, things will come together nicely.

What i want to do with this one :

• i definitely need to fix the hair, i rushed it and only looked at Misty from the pokemon anime show, without much thought to how it would translate to a more semi-realistic look.
• i decided to go for a more fantasy feel, dropping the SciFi for now, Fantasy is a much more natural direction for me and considering i'm trying to first have fun, this seemed reasonable.
• i want to observe what my current process is, i keep getting frustrated right after the first cleanup pass mostly, and i usually do a clean lineart of the first clean lineart, this is ridiculously time consuming and doesn't seem like a good approach, my first takeaway here is that i should probably spend more time polishing my early sketch instead of jumping in cleanup too soon.
• The coloring process will be inspired by what i used to do in my first job as a 2D illustrator for a card game called "Eredan ARENA", so i'll be using blending modes for a while, and then i'll paint naturally in order to push the rendering and lighting.
• I work on CSP and turned on the timelapse function, so i'll get a nice timelapse of the entire process when i'm done with it.

you may notice my colors are slightly more desaturated and lighter in some cases, compared to the original design from the show, this is because i'll first use a "multiply" layer to get an initial shadow pass, and having dark elements below it will always get too dark too fast.

[storm bolt]

wasn't convinced of the lineart, so redid it ^^
Still need to fix the red bits (add detail, want something sharper and more fantasy looking) then i'll move on to colors

[storm bolt]

A stronger lineart = much better overall result.

The flat colors are pretty much the same as before, with a few differences because of the different head and hair for example + a bit of gradient here and there.

Little line Occlusion is doing a lot already, and will guide me through the rendering stage.

But it holds up much better now, would pretty much hold up on its own without rendering if i wanted to be lazy 😏

But i'm not gonna be lazy, i'll render it anyway, can't wait to see how she'll look when finished.

[storm bolt]

and here she is!