Trunks Tutorial

Trunks was always a favourite character of mine on Dragonball Z. For this piece, I really wanted to grab his ready to fight attitude. With the rough, I tried to capture the liveliness of his pose, his pissed off glance, and the accuracy of the folds in his clothes.

With digital pencil lines, I try my hardest to be extra sensitive with the thickness of the lines. Less pressure equals lighter, thinner lines; predominantly what I use when I shade, such as his jean jacket collar. I have a rule where the lines on the outside are usually thicker than the lines on the inside.

When I put in the colour, I choose the local color of everything in the image. That means the colour of everything without the interference of light sources such as the sun, the sky, lamp, etc.

For this image, I wanted the shadows to have a slight purplish hue. I chose a medium-dark purple grey (lighter shadows) and a darker purple grey (darker shadows)  and put that layer on multiply over the colour layer. The lighting is hitting down on Trunks from the top. Anything facing up in the direction of the light is lit, while anything that wouldn't be seeing the light is covered in the shadows.

I added highlights after I completed the shadows. Anything with a reflective surface would have highlights. Hair, skin, metal would all bounce light stronger than denim jeans would. I also threw in a hint of rim lighting because anything dramatic has rim lighting :p However, I made sure to not overdo it as I didn't want it to take away from the main lighting.

To finish it off, I chose a neutral blue for the background, one that wouldn't compete with the colours I already had, and one that felt good with the strong hints of yellow. I really enjoy having a minimal amount of colours in an image but having them in different values. I find it's easier on the eyes and helps the image to not get too distracting and overdone. I then took a paper texture and layered it over everything on multiply.