Mascot Development: Work-In-Progress

When we were given the brief, we were told that we had to illustrate our mascots digitally. This is definitely a first! 


After reading tutorials from art forums and deviantART, I got the gist of CG. I decided I should blog about the work-in-progress for future references!


First I scanned in my sketch into the computer and penned the sketch using Pen Tool. The sketch was scanned at high resolution. It's always better to work on high resolution so that small flaws would go unnoticed when the final work is resized.


Brush size was first adjusted to 6 px before pen tool was used.

Fill in the spaces with base colours. It is okay to paint out of range. Take note as to not leave any white spaces. To tackle this, just fill a new layer with black at opacity of 30% and place it at the bottom.


For the characters to have depth, I painted shades and highlights. It is important to identify the light source such that the shadings do not look weird. Add a new layer and mark the different shades for easy reference. I painted shadows first. Highlights were left until the end.

When base colours and shadows were both painted on, I used an eraser to clean the edges.

I don't have stable hands so the edges appeared rough. I used gaussian blur to soften the shadows. Not the same adjustment levels can be used for all layers. Adjust the blurriness accordingly.

Later, when I was painting the second character. I found a new method to clean the rough edges. By using magic wand, I selected individual parts on the lineart layer. Invert the selection and press delete. Simple!

That was for painting the body. And now, the facial expression! The most important part of the face is the eyes. I used ~mew-ninjin's tutorial for the eyes.

Credits to: ~mew-ninjin on deviantART

Few more touch-ups and we're done!