Laetitia the Worgen - by ECMajor
Well, he did it again. ECMajor and his amazing pencil work drew this Worgen girl I really liked, so I went ahead and colored it too. I don’t play WoW but as I understand it, Worgens are a sort of werewolf. (no tails though). Anyway this one is again happily SFW. (well, not really. Don’t post it on your cubicle. But as far as Tumblr is concerned it is.)
So here’s his original:
See? Yeah, not REALLY SFW. Anyway, I used a LOT of layers on this one, but I have started doing inking when coloring stuff. However, I just about never do on ECMajor’s stuff because his pencil work is SO damn good. Subject matter may sometimes be downright weird, but no one could ever dispute his talent with good old pencil and paper, so I feel like it would be a disservice to ink over it.
First step, at least for me, is pretty much always to do flat colors.
I actually did try quite a few different colors, but I kept coming back to these for some reason. They’re weird, I know, esp. for a “d&d” type character. But hey, so is the outfit! Kinda gives me a McDonalds vibe. Okay, so next up I have LOTS of various gloss/highlights. I’m pretty much self-taught at this stuff, but for what I call “gloss” layers, it’s done with Color Dodge layers and basically you paint in various levels of grey and it lightens the underlying colors in a pretty natural way. For me, “Highlights” is when you use a normal layer and sort of overwrite everything underneath. Mostly I use it for eye highlights and things where I actually want the color to be exactly what I’m painting on, not adjusting the underlying layer like a Color Dodge would do. Enough jabber...
I frankly REALLY like how that turned out as far as highlighting goes. Used some Gradients for the leg gloss and less civilized methods for boob and bicep gloss. The whip I worked on for abnormally long to get it to look right, and claw highlights are sweet too if I do say so myself. All that and I’ve not even done shading yet! (Though tbh ECM’s pencil shading almost doesn’t require anything more.) But first, I through in a frankly simple, quick background. I just don’t like characters floating in space, though I suck at doing backgrounds too.
Okay, and now we have the shading and shadow to finish her up.
And that’s it. I think the perspective is somehow off on the background, but that’s the only thing I’m not too proud of. Maybe the McDonald’s color scheme, but I actually kinda like it anyway. However, pretty sure McDonald’s doesn’t serve alcoholic beverages and I’m DAMN sure their wait staff doesn’t come equipped with whips!
Slight update today. I always notice stuff after-the-fact. Was missing shadow on the bodice, a few little other shading edits and I changed the background perspective a little. I think it’s an improvement. Hope so at least!
