Taifau Cafe Cover Process

As stated in the other post, I did already have a finished cover picture! But honestly I wasn't happy with it when I first made it, and much less now... I was rushed to get it to print and in the end it wasn't even used! Oh well.

I still liked some of the other sketches. Ideally the one with only Ram and Milo would be the ideal choice as they are the main focus of this chapter, but this is a product to be sold, you guys don't sell sorry!!! Krea has to pick up your slack.... At least Ram has more presence compared to the original cover, so there is that at least. Sorry Milo Doko is more important I guess!!!!

Anyways, these sketches are about 2 years old at this point, not only have the characters gotten slightly updated overtime, but also I have been trying to adjust the way I draw them period, less "squashed" and cutesy, I think it would be for the better to slowly transition them into more normal, while still stylized proportions. The main difference is smaller heads and longer limbs/bodies lol, probably somewhat noticeable when looking back!

I REALLY wasn't sure if I was going to make it in time, the event is on the 23rd, and I needed these books by the 20th, so a bit over 2 weeks to get them. Normally I would just get to work instantly and try to get it done asap but I know I can be a bit perfectionist or slow when it comes to my digital work, but when it comes to traditional you don't get that luxury. Most of your choices are permanent. You made a mistake? Too bad, you would have preferred other colors? Too bad, work with the palette you have. Move on and pray you can fix it.

At the start everything is smooth sailing, I have a light board so I can just print out the sketch and ink over it. The most straight forward step! lol

And as usual, lots of uncertainty at this point! I had the idea of somewhat plan out the colors with Copic markers, to my surprise normal printer paper took the ink quite well, and I was pleasantly surprised with the looks of it. I'm not confident with my skill with markers just yet, so I decided to just do my usual watercolors but...

Marker test

Regret instantly sank in, I was not very happy with the first splash of colors, so before going any further I took the plunge and switched to markers...

Things were going somewhat well? Once again more doubts, so I switched back to watercolors. The idea was to make the base with those materials, while adding color through markers, which was working somewhat well I think!

Things felt a bit lacking but it was almost done, the final additions were through colored pencils and a simple blue ballpoint pen, making some lines bolder, little things like that.

By the end I was pretty satisfied! Then came the time to scan it but that's when other problems arose....

The texture of the colored pencils honestly wasn't doing it for me! I don't mind the look in person, but scanned I don't know, its a bit distracting and off putting... Maybe my issue was scanning it at such high resolution, (600ppi) but at this point its too late to redo. I have to digitally adjust it anyways to make it fit the cover so why not paint over it?

Which was a pleasant choice! Not only do I get more unique color choices due to them being directly tied to the tools I'm limited to work with, but also leaving some textures in ended up being quite the refreshing look!

This was a nice change of pace from my usual workflow. Working on a computer is honestly tiring, I know 99% of my work is digital but I don't enjoy it too much lol. The feel and texture of real tools makes drawing sooo much more enjoyable to me, so this was a lot of fun to do, most of the workload was done on paper and just minor touchups on digital that made everything come together.

I used watercolor paper which was about A4 size, nothing too big so the drawing itself is small, too. So certain things like the background were hard to draw due to the small size, I also made the mistake of doing it with Prismacolor, which compared to a pen has much thicker lines.... I didn't like the background at all lol! But thanks to digital I could repaint it all.

I want to learn how to use markers better, the scanning part of it kinda made me understand why its the go to for many manga artists lol, they blend pretty smoothly there's not much texture to them besides the paper you are using.... it's a clean look!

Overall I was pretty happy with this! This was fun I may do more pictures with this method in the future!!!! Being able to do it in just 2 days is also a very good morale booster lol