Manga Muse Fan Art

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It has been a while since I created a fully finished piece so I decided to work on that last week. I remember hearing one of my favourite groups on radio 1’s live lounge (muse) and had a look to see what pictures they took of their performance.

You can find the original image on the radio 1 Facebook page. I do not own muse or radio 1 (I just like to draw lol)

The image was done in several phases over the space of a week. It would have been quicker but I caught a cold ad that slowed me down.

First step was to get a quick sketch done. This was done with a low opacity brush. Whilst it is a slight bit difficult to make out it enables me to work fast and make changes with out the need of erasing so often. This makes it easy for me to map out where everything goes.

I import the plan into illustrator where I begin the inking process. This is one of the longest parts as I work in some of the details and improve the line strength. Crisp clean line art gives me extra confidence to add colour to the image. The down side to this method is I have to swap programs if I spot an error.

I group the different colours on different layer. All the skin will be on one layer, the tee shirt and guitar neck (sorry I don’t know the technical name) have the same colour so I keep them on the same layer. After that I add shading. I keep it at a 2-tone system. This adds shade, gives the image form and also adds speed. The tee shirt is a bit different as I added a third tone to make the inside of the sleeve a bit darker.

Now that the character is done I move on to the background. I opt for a flat 2d background. Very little shading and no line art in illustrator. This is to make the character pop out from the background. I once completed I then de saturate, darken and blur it slightly. Again this makes the character pop out even further.

Now that I am finished it is time for a quick artist’s critique.

Over all I am very pleased with it. As mentioned in an earlier blog post I struggle with backgrounds so it is nice to see the background gel so well with this piece.

This piece is not perfect. The hands are bugging me. I need to practice more on those so my next set of studies will probably be on hands. God I hate drawing hands lol.

Till next time peoples.