Full Bodied!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

I know that in recent times I've been rather focused on those portraits of characters that it almost seems like I never do actual character pictures, head to toe any longer. Well, I decided to change that up a bit and do a few full body character pictures. I also did another slight experiment too, but more on that later. Firstly, about the two characters I ended up drawing, Nui and Nogitsune.

So first, Nui. With Nui, I started off with a pencil and pen sketch (which is what I normally do, even with my digital pictures. It makes for a steadier hand for me)

So, despite the slightly Japanese name, Nui was actually not based on anything Japanese at all. The name was actually a bit on an in joke that just ended up sticking. Rather, Nui is from a more fantasy based story, and, if you catch the very tiny detail, it might be obvious that Nui is also not quite human.

I thought that the sketch came out quite well. The only thing that really bothered me about it was that foot. I swear it looks broken, but for some reason I couldn't fix it on the sketch (before I added the pen, that is), but since I was going to do the rest digitally, I thought I would have a bit more room to play around with it and deal with the perspective issue, so the poor character wouldn't have to suffer a broken limb. As such, I moved onto the digital stage! 

As you might notice, he no longer has a broken ankle! Huzzah! Though admittedly I did have a bit of a time getting the perfective on it. It is still a bit more flexible than his foot....probably should be, but it at least no longer looks like its being held together by boot leather alone.

If you want to see the full version of him in higher definition, check it out over on my DA here.

I think my favourite bits to draw on him was his hair and his sash. Both I think came out pretty good. The only bit I'm not sure about on the hair is that cowlick. It feels a tad bit too far back. Otherwise, it came out pretty well.

The next pic I did was one that also had something of an experiment in it. But firstly, lets actually talk about Nagisa themselves.

So, Nogitsune Nagisa is, in fact, a character I have drawn before, in.....mostly full body (Mostly cause their feet were hidden due to their clothes. I actually did a blog post about it a while back, in fact). But, as said, some bits were missing, and it was more to showcase their face, which is rarely actually shown in the story. In fact, the fox mask on that picture is more often seen as their 'face'. As such, I decided to do a full body of them with the mask on. As I had drawn Nagisa from the front before, this time I did a slightly different angle to show the character's nature somewhat as being somewhat secretive. So showing them looking over the shoulder from behind seemed a good idea to me. 

That said, this was how my sketch turned out:

There were a few things I wasn't sure about here. The first was their hand that is near their mask. The second was less where it was and more what it was. The hand placement seemed awkward, but as I drew this directly in biro, I didn't have the option to adjust it until it hit digital. The last was actually because it was digital that I worried. I've.....never actually drawn fire digitally before. It might not be too much of a surprise, since that element hasn't come up for me in the last few years since I picked up a tablet.

Of course, there are tutorials online, so I thought it wouldn't be too bad.

....Uh....I thought. It might have just been that I wasn't typing the correct words in a search engine, or I just couldn't find what settings I needed, but I just couldn't find a fire tutorial that worked on Clip Studio Paint. I found some for photoshop, but unless the keys needed were under a different name I couldn't find them for the life of me. As such, I had to experiment to make the blue fire I needed for my pic. So, what did I end up with?

Here:

It's a bit hard to see at lower resolution on a white background, so here is a link to where it is on deviantart, where the fire is a bit easier to make out.

As you can see, I fixed the hand into a different position. As for the fire, essentially what I did was make a blob of colour, use the finger smudge tool, then on another layer, with add glow, do the same, then repeat a third time with a smaller blob. I actually thought it came out pretty well for a first attempt ever at doing fire I an experimental manner at that. Of course, if anyone has any pro tips for it I'd love for the advice!

The fire was pretty fun to do. But one again, my fave part was the hair. I'm really starting to have fun with it now I have a new way of doing it. It doesn't seem as flat as hair used to look on my pics. I'll admit though, that Nogitsune Nagisa is one of my favourate characters to draw. They're just so.....flowy. lol

Anyway, that's all from me for now. I'm going to do a few more full bodies to go with my portraits to give some variation in my pics, so I hope you enjoy them!

Until next time!

Tara