Today’s a background day. Let’s see how Mizu has changed that trial sketch into a full blown background. The final background will be a little bit different because we had to make a major revision yesterday/today (Mizu is 12 hours ahead of us), but we can show some of the steps going toward the first version.

Just to remind ourselves of the sketch:

We gave the OK on the sketch because the layout looked great. Mizu then cleaned up the lines.

You can still see the outline for the carpet, but since that will be painted on later, it just has the lines for its edges. They are a little bit hard to see, but they still follow the original sketch, extending all the way forward and up the two staircases. Now time for some pretty line art:

Look at those beautiful flying staircases. There’s probably an official term for them, but we enjoy calling them like so. The side balconies aren’t in yet, but you can clearly see the intricate baroque-ian we’re going for in those rails. Baroque probably also isn’t the correct term, but… we just want that old architectural style with all the ornaments, filigree, and excess detail; if you know what the name of the style we’re going for is, tell us and we’ll switch to it.

Though a lot of background is copy pasta-able…it still takes a while to make half of the background (since it’s symmetric, you can just mirror it, yay digital art software).

Checking perspective now to before we color and add more details. Rivian looks a tiny bit giant, but if he was moved down a little and you imagine you’re standing on an elevated surface, then it doesn’t look wrong.

Aand then we added in the side balconies and did not test perspective again, proceeded to color, almost finished coloring and texturing…and realized that all the characters must be giant and levitating. So poor Mizu has to go all the way back to the lineart stage and fix the perspective.

Luckily, Mizu is a super optimistic and cheery artist, so she is tackling this challenge with all her fiery energy. Visit our Discord to witness her cuteness in person.