Yuna Kasai redesign WIP

I saw an outfit and it sparked a whole new re-design of a character. This was my first run at it.

 It didn't go quite according to plan; the reference, as it turns out, was AI-- the hands, upon close inspection, were some lovecraftian fever dream --so I had to improvise the gesture, resigned to the fact the drawing was going to be fubar. Regardless, I challenged myself to salvage what I could from the busted anatomy; still knowing full well I wasn't going to feature this drawing; also knowing that it would be a great way to practice my anatomy.

 What I learned:

For one that black hair is VERY forgiving, and that bangs are fun but frustrating to render--you have to break up the silhouette of the hair. The hair is much more feminine than my previous iterations with this character (references, kids, invest!).

  For her hosery I kept it simple: Just a darker shade with a soft highlight on her shins, calves and knee cap. (I wish I'd had a proper reference for her shoes...!)

 This entire experience has pushed me to learn the grayscale-to-color work flow. Not for the Bard's Gestures, oh no, those are done with a basic 5 layer* cell shade technique, because I can church them out on the weekend. That said, I always intended to do fan art of the Bard, bc I love woodcut art, and stippled shading, and halftones, and pixelart, etc. Grayscale is just an easy way to shade while relegating color temperature to a separate step of the coloring process. I know big-name illustrators swear by grayscale, I just never bothered bc I loved my lines too much to just throw them away. Anyways, I guess this exercise taught me I need to learn grayscale after all.

 I also learned that large breasts are incredibly difficult to render without being painfully tacky; but the end result, while still underdeveloped, was satisfying.  (Don't get me wrong, I still whiffed this render job, buuut you have to learn to draw something bad before you can learn to draw it well.)