Yuri Mania 14: Gift from Yaku - Coloured

Art by Yakuri Moe
Colour by Lightning Sabre

After a Thursday evening filled with undoing, changing colour, making layers and changing brush sizes, I finally finished colouring this art work drawn by Yaku! I could have done it the way I did the last artwork I coloured, but this one is special since it was especially done for me and these are two of my favourite anime characters! I really think I could do more, but I'm not that good enough in colouring yet... I can always call it a work-in-progress and of course am appreciative of any constructive criticism and advice. ^^

Previously seen as a rough sketch before in this blog. I'm really glad when Yaku inked the lines to make it sharp for me so it was easier to colour... but umm... did she have to use that nickname? -3-

Anyhoot... colour schemes... I knew Rei has to have a pale skin, but I know Saber is quite pale as well. Saber has some warmer colour in her than Rei. The trademark hair colour has to fit as well, but I opted not to even look at samples of their hair colour since I know them by heart. Plus Rei so many shades of blue in other fanarts anyway. So I went with my own choosing. The red eyes for Rei was easy, but I wasn't sure what shade of green Saber's eyes should be. I know this ain't perfect, but I can always go back and change it later, especially if I improve.

Hmm looking at this again, I think I should've made Saber's ribbons darker... I also wanted to use a little bit of trademark colours in the schemes. Saber's swimsuit has been white for many other art, so I kept it that way. I can always add stripes to it once I get used to colouring curves ^^; Rei's swimsuit colours are based on the Eva unit 00, thus it's a yellow suit with gray trim. I would've prefered the blue Unit 00, but I don't want to conflict with Saber's too much. So as for Saber, I made the float tube behind her to be the trademark silver and blue armor scheme. That float was one of the last things I coloured since I have no idea how to do it... Thankfully I came across Yamada's posts on DC.com that had a float in it. ^^

One of the things I wanted to improve was also shading. I didn't do any shading on the bunnygirl Mikuru... so I wanted to try it out. I saw a little bit of samples from Gelbooru.com and also looked at RadiantDreamer's colouring tutorial. I think he uses a tablet though, so he has better results. The above art is done without shading. Not too much difference since I've only begun doing it this way. Hopefully I'll improve again. Good thing this is all in the computer so it can always be revised. I really wish I can draw too because I want to add a swimming pool in the background... I can always Photoshop one in, but that's cheating >_< I made multiple layers and also learned how to make layer set in Photoshop. So convenient with that layer set now. I made sure that every colour has different layers this time around, so now I can always change the colour of the float and Saber's & Rei's swimsuit. Anyone got a better colour scheme? I'd love to add a logo on the float, but I was too tired to think of one and how to do it... Probably the design on Saber's armor.

And finally I was messing around with the colour scheme again today before I posted this and did an ecchi omake. Since Yaku called me "Ecchi-Man" then I might as well make it ecchi, lol. A thousand pardons for messing with your lines, Yaku ^^;;;

NSFW NOSEBLEED ALERT!!

Ehehe. Anyway... I started this around 4 PM on Thursday, but with many distractions, I didn't really finish til 3 AM... So adding with the stuff I did today, I'd say about 9 hours? Yikes! Did I really do it that long?? 0.o

EDIT: I loved it so much that it's on my phone now :P

Coloured Bunny Girl Mikuru

Art by Yakuri-Moe

Coloured by Lightning Sabre

My first Photoshop line art colouring project is finally done and even approved! This Bunnygirl Mikuru was beautifully drawn by Yaku and posted on Halloween of last year at DannyChoo.com. I spent about 6-7 hours colouring from December 23rd to 24th. Surprisingly it didn't take me as long as I thought it might've been, so I've delayed the project until I had enough time to do it over the 2 weeks off I had from my office.

The first obstacle I had was that I only had the low resolution art from DannyChoo.com... Darkening the lines was priority, but then the gray pixels started showing up, ah such a pain. It's not too bad though since the line art was pretty clean in the first place ^_^

Then I was stuck... where do I start colouring. Easiest part was the bunny ears. So red and I also added dark red for shading (which is the only place I shaded lol). Oh and I also read somewhere in Newtype that one of the popular artists in Japan created a layer of colour in Photoshop so that he can use that colour over and over again. I don't remember who it was though, okama or Range Murata, not sure. You can see my palette below.

Looks very ghostly, eh?

Ok after the ears I have to move to the bigger parts... then I realize I should've closed some of the gaps which made colouring so much easier. The eyes are very cute, but a bit difficult to colour because I could never draw anime eyes before in the first place, let alone colouring it, so I went and surf the net for eye colour references for Mikuru. I also realized something as I was looking through the pictures. She needs a star-shaped mole on her chest! It was good I looked around first. Oh and here's a secret... I know how to make a star in Macs using Zapf Dingbats, but for the life of me I couldn't make one in PC, so that's actually an asterisk lol.

After much of the colouring was done I decided on the stocking which was surprisingly easy to do, so I challenged myself. I was in over my head though... Fishnet stocking, which is what I wanted to do when I first seen this art. I had no idea how to do it. I was a total nub at colouring and drawing. I can probably do it outside the computer, but how the hell do I do it in Photoshop?? This is the result which involved a lot of duplications and memory eating on my computer. It was sluggish as hell XD What do you think of the result?

The last few details is a bit of a shine on her hair which I've seen a lot in anime arts. If I had a tablet I can probably do it better. Using mouse is hell for this btw. Oh and some art also has these reddish shine on their knees and joints. I duplicated that effect here. I showed this to my friend, who doesn't looks at a lot of anime art, and he asked me why her knees are bruised... I explained that it's one of the anime styles. Then I sorta realize what he may have implied with the knees, carpet burn perhaps? XD

I also made a couple of variations because I can play around with the Photoshop layers :P I need to learn shading for sure... I just don't understand how lighting and shading works, thus why there's no shading here, except for a few parts.

Bare legs!

White Bunny Suit variation

So a first (somewhat) successful colouring project done. Hopefully this won't be the last because it was quite fun. I'll be working on Mikuru here and there though since I'm an editing fiend!Special thanks to Yaku for supplying the great art and the approval ^^