At long last (it took me more than 24 hours to complete the painting alone!)- ZERO KIRYU from Hino Matsuri's Vampire Knight manga. Mind you, I'm just a vagabond in Photoshop, meaning I just kind of discover through trial-and-error how to paint this picture in that sophisticated computer program on-the-spot. I used Photoshop 6.0 (quite passe already, considering there have been several updated versions after 6.0 and the latest for the time being is CS3, but anyway, skills count - regardless of how updated the software might be, it's useless if we know not how to use it! ;P). Actually, I had spent the first night doing some considerable painting with this picture, but my laptop went ga-ga and, off- everything went blank, so I had to start all over again. Ghee, I hate technology when this happens.
The tools: I cannot recall well, but I'll try - the main tool used in the making of this portrait is Magnetic Lasso for getting the lines; Airbrush for colouring (using Multiply mode in 30% opacity because that way I can build up colour to the tone that I wish); Dodge tool for highlighting, and Burn tool for surfacing darker tones where necessary. I only worked on one layer because I blasted up on the selection tool, performing addition, substracting, inverting and all sorts of modern magic with it to make the selections. I made about 20 selections, from the skin, the Bloody Rose, to every shadow in the jacket, but each selection is not made in one go- I had to go over it over and over again, along with the calculations.
Reflection: I wonder how do the digital art masters really master their art? This drawing really put my eyes, my eye-hand coordination and my mouse's precision limit to test. Well, frankly, I'm not the kind of person who like to stare at the LCD and TV screen for hours... Anyway, the most important thing is, I enjoyed making the picture, because I really put my heart in doing it.
Time tally:
Manual lineart (with inking) : 3 days [10-12/4/2009]
Digital painting : 2 sleepless nights [8-9/5/1009]
Photographed with my Nokia N73's 3.2MP phone (thanks Dad! :)
PS: Japanese names occasionally put my rigid mind on fire. Which is the correct written form, surname/name or name/surname? e.g. surname Kuran, name Kaname, then is it written Kuran Kaname or Kaname Kuran? In the anime, it is pronounced as Kuran Kaname, but I'm not sure about the written form though. Zero's name is, of course, is pronounced Kiryuu Zero, but I wrote it as Zero Kiryu because I saw it somewhere.
