Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
If you missed the last couple of posts, I started a new series where I use this template to draw different characters based on suggestions from my viewers on Twitch!
I found this template on Facebook and had the idea to draw different characters for a potential NFT series in the future, but then the whole NFT thing kinda tanked. But I thought it was still a cool drawing exercise to do and I wanted to reward my loyal viewers. So instead of drawing characters I already know I thought asking chat would be cool since it would expose me to different characters too!
This request was by one of my mods, Nightsy, who has redeemed this a bunch of times previously. This time he wanted me to draw Yukino Mayuzumi from Persona 2! I've never played the Persona games myself, but I know of them, especially P5 because of Smash Ultimate. I do listen to the soundtrack a lot since the Persona songs are awesome!
Source: Megami Tensei wiki
Anyway upon researching, I found that Yukino has at least 2 different models since she's been in Persona 1 and 2, not to mention the manga and briefly in Persona 3 as well. But Nightsy wanted her model from Persona 2 (which I also think looks the coolest) so I went with that. I used these images for reference and came up with a basic sketch on stream:
As with all these NFT art pieces I only follow the template for the overall shape and position but I do cater the poses and facial expressions to the character that I'm drawing. I also do a custom background that suits them.
So for this one Nightsy suggested an alleyway for a background since I had no idea what to draw for her. I thought an alleyway would be pretty cool to try and draw and he gave me some references that were a little dark, so I found this very pretty vector of an alleyway with a sunset I could trace.
And after a rough sketch of the background I realised it would take a lot of work especially with the lighting effects that I was hoping I could pull off. But since the character herself is fairly simple to draw I took the challenge.
To start, I worked on Yukino first, outlining her and tried my best to make her hand accurate since she was holding knives. I think this was the first character of this series I drew with actual hands since she's holding something.
Thankfully I learned how to draw lips from drawing Caitlyn from League so it didn't look like there was a butt on her mouth. The rest was pretty simple, although I did trace the logo on her hat as well since I wanted it to be accurate.
Next was colouring! She really only had 4 colours so this didn't take long either. It was actually pretty simple to colour and other than her nails looking a little weird it was pretty alright!
So this was what the background was going to look like basically. I did a rough trace of the major lines I would be following but I also realised it was going to take a lot not only because of the stuff on the walls but also the extra brick lines and the lighting effects. This was probably going to be one of the most detailed backgrounds I've done for these NFTs since Max Caufield!
For the background but I did initially do some outlines for some of the prominent things like the rubbish bin, the air-conditioning unit and the garage door, as well as the lamps and building lines but then I realised it would be way too many lines for this piece. So I decided I would change the colour of the lines later so the background would be more seamless.
After colouring the door, I worked backwards starting with the sunset and skyline, which I used a special brush for.
Then it was time to buckle down and colour in the lighting effects for the door and the control panel beside it, as well as the pipes. I was initially thinking of using airbrushes for the lights but figured I just followed the reference since that comic book style effect seemed to work.
Tbh after that I was kinda burned our so I went with something simple for the rest of the buildings, other than drawing lines on the garage.
Then after colouring in the air-con unit I initially thought that looked pretty good but it was still missing something, and felt a little bland compared to the door, so I slept on it and came back with some notes:
And after that I just buckled down and fixed it, using some textured brushes for details on top of drawing the brick lines and adding in more shadows until finally, we get this:
I did recolour most of the building lines but I left the garage lines since it looked a little off when I changed it. But after that I was so relieved! It took a lot of work but it looked pretty good and I was super proud of how the background came out in the end! Although I did reference it from a vector, it is still quite different and I think this suits Yukino Mayuzumi a lot better! It's more subdued compared to the reference, and makes her stand out.
Here's the timelapse:
For these characters that look quite simple I tend to go overboard for the background since the previous pieces I did looked quite plain with a simple background as well. I think this was way too much tbh but it did look good so I'd say it was worth it! But never again because that was exhausting..
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
