Color Study 3-2-2022

 Welp. It worked. By publicly listing this study---then giving it a HARD deadline (thursday)--I did what had to be done to keep my word: and here it is! 

 For anyone just getting into digital drawing, here's what I did (and here's what I learned):
1)I traced the original drawing so I could understand the lines--the style and the little time saving tricks to stream line the gesture.
2)I made layers for each element of interest--one for skin, another for the pelt thing, the skirt, etc.--and then I locked the layers using the "lock transparent pixels" button (the checker board above your layers in Photoshop). 2-D Animation rarely bothers with environmental lighting, preferring to let line width ( or "speed"), perspective and gesture do the heavy lifting. 
3)I put all the flat colors down, the base for the shading and highlights, and, because all the layers were locked, I just fattened up my brush and started slapping down a secondary colour.
JUST A SECONDARY COLOUR!*
Aaaaand that's it, that's all you need to do to color a cartoon character on Amazon prime. 
(That's honestly a huge relief, and, after shying away from coloring for so long, horrified by all the Rossdraws and Marc Brunets out there, I discovered, once I sat down and bit the bullet, that a little goes a very long way to sell character and drama.) 

Once all the flats were down, I felt comfortable, because I understood the steps, with just tweaking the details:

A)I noticed her pelt whatever had a base that was purple, not white, and the drop shadow was just more purple; but I watched a video with Marc Brunet where he advised using opposites--warm shades for cool bases and vice versa--made them pop more: so I turned the pelt's base a light red and the drop shadow, the secondary color, a shade of purple. 
B)I added a few more shadows than the original cell--surprisingly, I held back in some instance because the realism was ruining the drama, the clarity of the pose. 
C)I studied the dark blue stains on the original's tunic made them a warmer color (dark yellow), and then I threw on some teeny tiny drop shadows on the stains facing the "camera"; just to make them "feel" more globby, even if no one can see them.
D)I distorted one stain to round the shape of her breast, so the one glancing away from the "camera" could skate by with minimal shading; because the point of interest was the WANTED poster. 
E)I did some mminor tweaks with the skin, just the lips; I followed Marc Brunet's advise, again, and added more RED to the drop shadow under her lips--because our blood is RED, the darker the shade the more RED should be in it. That goes for any red-blooded animal; if you make a bug person, like an alien, the same shit applies. If the alien is a spider, its blood is blue, so the darker the shade the more blue should be added. 
F)I tricked out her eyes (a little) to make them glassier, a bit more realistic. The eyes in animation, if they're even the tiniest bit real, will pardon a myriad of fuck ups. 

What would I do differently:
I'd use a blur filter on the team instead of just lowering the opacity on the OG cell. To make it look more like a soft-focus/deep-focus shot. 



*How many British kids have typed "colour" into DA only to be told it's "wrong"?