Fox Promo

Loose sketch as always. Getting the idea and anatomy down.

I usually leave my art loose and sketchy but it was too much for this tutorial so I actually went and "inked" it.

Here's the crutch of the entire piece. THE MOST IMPORTANT PART! I create a flat layer for the skin (here I used a solid color adjustment layer but a regular layer is fine I just want you to get used to seeing what adjustment layers and masks can do). Then I put that flat (and all my future flats) in a group and call it color or whatever. The I create another adjustment layer, call it Light, set it to multiply and group it (alt+control+G) to the folder. Here's why: This layer controls ALL the light for the character. Meaning everything in the color folder is local color (color without any light influencing it). The light adjustment layer is basically what the character would look like if there were standing in a dark room. We are going to erase out the darkness aka add light!

So on the mask layer (which is a black and white only subsection of a layer) I pick a light source direction and begin to add black to where I don't want the shadow to be. This will constantly be refined throughout the steps.

Now that I have a base light direction and my brain can make sense of the overall feel, I turn off the light layer and just work on some local color tweaks by adding a simple highlight and shadow adjustment layers. Again these are just simple color adjustments.

Checking to make sure my light sources match up and doing more tweaking.

Back in local I duplicate my shadow layer and switch the mode to Overlay. this gives me a rosy color I use for blush and hot spots. This adds a bit more color to the image and stops it from being so flat.

Again checking and correcting, maxing and relaxing, chilling and top-billing!

Then I rinse and repeat for all the other objects. I always start with skin first because it sets the tone for the rest of the image and usually is the largest thing colored.

Just simple hair shading. I didn't go overboard.

One of the best things about using an adjustment layer is the ability to change colors on the fly. You are never stuck with a color. Just double click on the color and change it. I reworked the shadow layer for a better hue.

Normally I only work on a couple layers so to speed things up I just created an extra layer that will suffice for the rest of the flats. On this layer I also added some super highs along with eye and lip color.

Add the bubblegum with a simple soft light layer.

Collar and tie layer.

Nipples

The power of using a light layer is that by erasing out darkness you can get nice effects and blending without having to spend a lot of time looking for the right colors. For me at this point it's about the speed of it.

Lastly I did her badge bikini. Since it's a metal. I did a local color of brown then did the "gold sheen" with a brush set to linear dodge so that it keep highlighting to a bright gold color. Then I made sure the light layer was hitting it properly like everything else.

Ok here's the fun tricky part. With everything colored and lit. I leave all the layers active (minus the white background) hit ctrl+A to select everything then COPY MERGED. This makes a flat color of everything turned on. The I hit Paste Special - Paste in place in the edit menu to put a 1-layer duplicate of the image on top of everything else. Then I set that layer to linear dodge. This is going to be our highlight layer.

I add a mask to that layer and turn the layer off by adding black to the mask. Then I go in and paint where I want these super highlights to be.

Boom! Slightly more highlights and even a background.

Now under that highlight layer I paste into place yet another copy of my image but set the layer to either multiply, overlay or linear burn. Something to make the image darker because this is going to be our super shadows.

Again add a mask, turn the mask to black to make the layer invisible and then paint in the shadows subtly.

Finally (when as much as I'm going to go into for this) I set my original ink layers to soft light so the lines blend in better.

Here's the image together, one with the light layer off and one with it on. One simple adjustment layer made the whole image come together. Like I said it's about speed sometimes and this trick helps me speed up my work flow drastically.