Amy Sorel [Illustration + General Commission Process]

PSD Link: https://mega.nz/#!1m53EIbJ!DuYfhS5mHnE5JliCDuOlzoLYvEwdLDgP_Wx4ieZ_YdQ

One of my first commissions was an illustration of Amy Sorel from Soulcalibur VI. It was quite a work with all the patterns and laces but I'm satisfied how it turned out in the end.

My client gave me much freedom to handle the pose. Not many artists would be okay with such less specifics for many good reasons. Like they could risk that their suggestion might be not in the client's favor after spending much time with the lineart.

I love to tickle and tackle my own creativity so what I do is brainstorming different poses which might fit the personality of the character. For that some prior knowledge about the character is important. Therefore I always ask my clients to provide me many references and information about that character as possible.

Usually it won't took much time and it actually allows me to get a good impression of different options how it might look at the end. Sometimes when I think that every pose in the draft would work fine I let my client decide. In most cases I am confident about the pose and send the draft to my client as asuggestion, so they can greenlight it.

I mostly spent time on the lineart since they are not only my most distinct drawing feature but also helps me to separate my color sections better since it is my personal quirk that I hate it to overpaint a section with a color beyond the lines. Must be because of my manga workflow I guess.

For the final touch on Amy I added some patterns to the dress. I thought those danmask textures (which I gathered over year primarily for the wallpaper of interior illustrations and backgrounds) it might resemble the style of gothic-lolita fashion a bit more. The light blue accents are also an important addition since they help to make the overall design appear less flat - the same reason why I'm recently using more soft shadows instead of hard ones since it was a common problem of my old artworks that they all look to flat in my eyes which bothered me for years.