#progress animation

This is the first inking I've done in five months, and the first art at all in three months due to my bipolar swinging into a massive depressive episode. That depressive episode ended 1-2 weeks ago, and I poured basically ALL my "haven't done anything creative in three months" feels into this commission, making it far more detailed and complicated than I normally would have. I learned a LOT from this process though, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

One thing I learned was how to ink dark, curly hair. I'd never inked either dark or curly hair before, let alone the two at once. I basically taught myself how to do it on the fly, and it was pretty rewarding!

The other major hangup here was the goddamn sweater. Once the client selected a pose (I gave her six to choose from), I had to pick fashions that would flatter the poses. Will was easy, tux and done, but for Hannibal I decided I wanted a cable knit sweater with detailing on the sleeve/shoulder, since that's the visible part. I looked for references on the internet and found one that had interesting cabling/knotwork that I thought would look nice.

It.

Was.

A.

NIGHTMARE.

The cabling on the sleeve took by FAR the most time out of anything in this project (including Will's hair), especially figuring out how the pattern would interact with the folds at the elbow. I do think it came out pretty nice, but wow I will know for the future to not add features like that without considering the consequences.